Happyaku Bikuni 八百比丘尼

About Happyaku Bikuni 八百比丘尼

Happyaku Bikuni (八百比丘尼, “Eight-Hundred-Year-Old Nun”), sometimes called Yao Bikuni, is a popular Japanese folk tale. It begins with a fisherman from Wakasa Province who catches a strange fish unlike any he has ever seen. He invites friends to inspect it, but one notices its head resembles a human face and warns everyone not to eat it.

Though most guests discreetly discard their pieces, one guest—drunk on sake—accidentally brings it home. His young daughter demands a treat, and before he can stop her, she has already tasted the flesh. Surprisingly, she suffers no harm. Years pass, and after the girl marries, she stops aging, while her husband grows old and dies. She remarries multiple times, eventually becoming a Buddhist nun wandering the countryside. In the end, she returns to Wakasa and reputedly dies at 800 years old in a cave near Kūin-ji Temple in what is now Obama City.

Sold and shipped by Vinz Schwarzbauer.

About Vinz Schwarzbauer

Vinz Schwarzbauer (*1987 in Graz, Austria) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2014. In 2011/12, he spent a year in Hamburg on the Art School Alliance Scholarship at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK). He was a co-founder of the magazine for narrative drawing "Franz the Lonely Austrionaut" and has illustrated for renowned media and theaters such as Falter, Jacobin Magazine, Der Standard, Burgtheater Wien, and Residenztheater München. His comic debut Mäander was published by Edition Moderne in 2023. Vinz Schwarzbauer lives and works as a comic artist and illustrator in Vienna, Austria.