disturbing facts about ancient Japan number one hito bashid scattered across Japan you'll find castles built hundreds of years ago during the country's Waring States period today many of these historic sites are now popular tourist attractions but did you know that some of these castles hold a dark secret that not many people know about hitto bashira or human pillar was a form of human sacrifice in ancient Japan that involved burying people alive inside the foundations of important buildings the idea was that these human sacrifices would appease the god and ward off evil spirits for Castle specifically
hitto bashid was used because it was said that the spirit of the sacrificed would protect the structure from disasters like floods earthquakes and enemy attacks imagine being chosen for that it was like overtime work for an eternity with no overtime pay H now that I think about it that does sound pretty Japanese actually the most well documented case of Hub bashira is from maoka Castle which is still standing in Sakai City while under construction one of the walls of the castle kept collapsing instead of seeking out a structural engineer the builders decided that sacrificing a
poor oneeyed woman named oshizu made a lot more sense oshizu agreed to participate in this ritual under one condition that the lord of the castle would make one of her children into a samurai he agreed and with that she stood in position as Stones were slowly piled around her until she was crushed to death leaving her two children behind astonishingly oshizu seemed to be exactly what the builders were missing and construction of the castle was successfully completed in 1576 she could rest peacefully knowing that at least one of her sons would go on to have
a much better life as a samurai unfortunately the Lord who made the promise was soon transferred to another Province leaving osu's now orphan children behind the Legends say that every spring when the rains begin osu's tears make the moat surrounding the castle overflow and to this day some locals say you can hear a woman crying near the castle during the heaviest of rains number two shimo if you thought composting for your home Garden was intense it's got nothing on shimo imagine this you're living in Edo Japan you have a nice little farm outside of the
city but your crops are in desperate need of some fertilizer no Home Depot for another 200 years so you buy the next best thing your neighbor in ancient Japan Farmers took organic farming to a whole another level and used human feces and urine as fertilizer for their crops in the nogo zenu an agricultural compendium which was published in 1697 the author States the superior farmer values as he values gold the farmers around Edo now modern day Tokyo were the biggest users of shimo as their Farms provided all the food for the growing city and the
best source for this natural fertilizer was the landlords in Edo who owned apartment buildings called nagaya these buildings had tiny one-bedroom units and all the residents shared a public toilet so you could get all the poop you needed in just one stop the landlords of course love this arrangement with the farmers as selling the poop of their tenants was an easy side hustle they were literally turning into gold what's crazy is that for some of these landlords selling their tenants poop was even more profitable than the rents they collected as with all hot Commodities there
were different grades of shimo and if you wanted the premium stuff the highest quality was said to come from the homes of Lords the Lords ate the best food so obviously they produced the highest quality fertilizer their poop was exclusively sold to the best farmers who then provided their best produce to the Lords to start the cycle all over again you are what you eat I guess now something that may not be obvious is that the constant removal of human waste from Edo by these Farmers had the unexpected benefit of making the city one of
the most sanitary pre-industrial cities in the world citizens of many European cities of the time just dumped their into nearby waterways or onto the streets causing epidemics of disease but because Japanese Farmers couldn't get enough of the brown stuff the waterways that ran through Edo were pristine and gave its citizens a constant source of fresh drinking water but back to the farmers while hauling away poop from the city may be an awesome deal for the landlords and citizens of Edo there were some pretty horrible downsides for the users of shimo first off can you imagine
the smell of working in those fields then there's the health aspect of using untreated human waste as fertilizer parasites bacteria you name it you and the food you were growing were probably covered in that stuff all the time now I know why Japanese people don't like brown rice farmers in Japan used shimo as their main fertilizer Source until the 1920 when commercial fertilizer was introduced forcing landlords to have to pay someone to take away the poop from their buildings number three heasen if you think some parts of Japanese culture are weird now let me tell
you Japanese culture was always weird heasen which translates to fart battle was a collection of Scrolls painted by an unknown artist in the 1600s depicting obviously various scenes of people having increasingly epic fart battles instead of talking about it let me just show you some of the scenes on this scroll here's one that seems to be depicting a sort of Dragon Ball beam battle where two men used their farts to launch an old man into the air but are countered by another man who uses his fart to launch a cat back at them here's one
where it appears to depict some sort of sneak attack with a guy farting through a wall Kool-Aid man style to attack two people hiding behind it here's one that seems to be depicting a gang Turf War but one of the gangs figured out they can use fans to blow their enemy farts back at them and lastly here's one where two naked ladies fart together to take out what looks like an oppressive Lord there are some theories that these pieces of art were a social commentary of the intrusion of westerners into Japan but come on look
at these things I really don't think that's what's going on here number four Samurai shudo we often think of Samurai as stoic sword masters with a strict code of honor and while the samurai did follow the strict code of Bushido did you know they also had some other practices that would probably get them thrown in jail today in addition to Kendo and iido the samurai also practiced shudo which may sound just like another martial art but it was actually The Art of Loving specifically The Art of Loving young boys shudo or the way of the
young was a relationship between an experienced Samurai and his young male Apprentice called a wakashu these wakashu were usually around 10 or 11 years old and the samurai would teach them the art of swordsmanship discipline and martial arts and in exchange the boy would have to cuddle and make out with his master actually it was way worse than just making out if the boy agreed there were relationship would be formalized in a Brotherhood contract and the two were expected to be monogamous shudo lovers this contract would demand extreme loyalty in and out of the bedroom
for both the Samurai and his Apprentice they were even expected to defend each other to death if necessary the interesting thing is the monogamy was only for menonmen relations both the Samurai and the wakashu were free to engage in extracurricular activities with the ladies and the samurai could even get married to a woman if he wanted to the sexual relationship between the Samurai and his wakashu was said to end when the boy became an adult though the master and Apprentice would remain friends for life I guess maybe the thrill was lost when the wakashu mustache
and lowered voice came in hey Master want to get some lunch what's up with your voice I don't know today if you tried any of this you would probably be in prison becoming a wakashu to at least one of your fellow inmates but shudo was societally accepted as a normal step toward becoming a samurai in fact all the greatest Samurai you've probably heard about had wakashu Oda Nobunaga the first great unifier of Japan had one named Mori ranmaru the guy who was so ruthless here ear in the nickname of the demon king of the sixth
heaven was giggling under the sheets with this underaged Apprentice hard to believe but it's true number five sooko shinsu when you hear the word Buddhist you probably think of peaceful monks meditating in a remote Monastery surrounded by nature but in ancient Japan Buddhists of that period were a completely different animal first off Japanese Buddhists in the 1500s practiced their own form of shudo where they would have intimate relationships with their acolytes the 17th century Japanese Buddhist scholar wrote in defense of these relationships even the mountain dwellers who cut brush for fuel have learned to take
pleasure in the shade of young saplings how romantic but that's not all that was different about the Buddhists in ancient Japan they were also Fierce Warriors who fought not only against Samurai but also went to war with other Buddhists what originally began as protests when certain temples felt their Emperor was choosing favorites eventually escalated into allout Buddhist on- Buddhist combat these Buddhist Warriors known as so first began attacking and burning down each other's temples but later turned their attention to Samurai and started attacking them they were known to be Fearless Warriors who fought to the
death with long Spears called naginata and were also skilled with bows and swords but besides making out with their acolytes and killing other Buddhists by far the most insane thing some of these Japanese Buddhist monks did was a practice called sokushinbutsu where they tried to achieve a state of Enlightenment by ritualistically mummifying themselves sokushinbutsu was a process of self-mummification that took years of intense preparation the goal was to slowly go from living to not living and leave behind a corpse that didn't Decay after you passed if you were successful and your dead body wasn't being
eaten by maggots and falling apart you were considered to have reached Enlightenment and your mummy would be put on display as a new Buddha the self-mummification process would begin with a special diet called moku jiki which translates to tree eating for a thousand days the monk would wander the forest eating a diet of pine needles tree resin and seeds this would help him lose all the fat muscle and bacteria in his body to prepare for the next step the monk would then stop eating food all together and only drink tiny amounts of salted water for
100 days the whole time would be spent in intense meditation when the monk felt death was near his disciples would lower him into a pine box placed 9 ft underground they would insert a small bamboo Airway and then bury him alive in total darkness the monk continued his meditation and would ring a bell at certain times throughout the day to Signal he was still alive when the ringing stopped the Monk's disciples would dig him up to check if he had indeed passed the airway would be removed and the monk would be sealed again after another
1,000 days had passed the disciples would check on the monk one last time and if his body was free of any signs of Decay he had achieved Enlightenment and he would then be put on display as a living or I guess not so living Buddha there are still temples in Northern Japan that display the mummified remains of successful monks today sokushinbutsu was made illegal in 1879 but one last Monk named vukai attempted it illegally in 1903 unfortunately for him maybe because they feared being associated with a crime his disciples never did the final step of
checking on him so he was left underground for almost 60 years until he was discovered by researchers in 1961 to their shock his body was perfectly mummified and well preserved so I guess bukai made it to Enlightenment after all
