Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi Is Interesting in Many Different Ways,

¶ … Mimi-nashi-hoichi is interesting in many different ways, but its most fascinating context lies in that which the West may call 'insanity' and, accordingly, penalize, whilst the Orient, seeing the same condition, rewards it and accords it fame. Mimi-nashi-hoichi is the Shinto sacred narrative of a man who was visited by an august assembly and ordered to play for them his bewitching composition of the battle of Dan-no-ura. Night after night he did so refusing to reveal his mission to others as demanded by his listeners.

One day, the priest and others who hosted him elicited the story out of him when they discovered him sitting in the cemetery and playing to the dead, "and behind him, and about him, and everywhere above the tombs, the fires of the dead were burning, like candles." Alarmed that the dead bewitched him, the priest and the acolyte covered him with protective amulets: with their writing-brushes, they traced upon his breast and back, head and face and neck, limbs and hands and feet, -- even upon the soles of his feet, and upon all parts of his body, -- the text of the holy sutra called Hannya-Shin-Kyo.

There the dead found him during the night and when Hoichi didn't respond seized him by the ears and tore off those ears. When the priest saw him the next day, he realized that he had covered all but forgot the ears. Hoichi received medical care and recovered. He became famous as a result of his adventures and received the appellation of Mimi-nashi-Hoichi: "Hoichi-the-Earless." Noble people visited Akamagaseki to hear his wonders. Most intriguing about this incident is the Asian response to Hoichi's incident.

A Western contemporary may likely have been disturbed by the whole incident, felt threatened by Hoichi's hallucinatory (they would have called it) experiences, and compelled him to receive medical aid. At worst, they would have institutionalized him. The Asian society rewarded him. The Concise Medical Dictionary declares that insanity refers to: A degree of mental illness such that the affected individual is not responsible for his actions or is not capable of entering into a legal contract." (Tigthe, 2005, 256) The West traditionally perceived abnormality in this manner.

The Webster Dictionary of 1851, for instance, classified the term as referring to "the state of being unsound in mind" and "applicable to any degree of mental derangement from slight delirium or wandering, to distraction" (Tigthe, 2005, 257). Hoichi would certainly have fit these terms. He was 'not responsible for his actions' and he suffered delirium, distraction, and wandering.

In the last third of the 19th century, new categories of so-called partial insanities were created: folie raisonee, delirium, mania, kleptomania and erotomania (including here that which is now known as homosexuality and lesbianism), as well as categories affecting not only reason but also emotional or volitional capacities. Meanwhile, inconsistencies with hypothesized structure across normal and abnormal personality have complicated attempts to develop a comprehensive structural model of personality for 'abnormality' (Markon, Krueger, & Watson, 2005). Debate exists how to structurally decide whether an individual is 'normal' or 'abnormal' with Foucault,.