林檎の怪
りんごのかい

Translation: apple spirit
Alternate names: ringo no sei
Habitat: gardens with apple trees
Diet: human feces

Appearance: Ringo no kai are the spirits of apple trees which have had fruit sit for too long on the branch without being picked and eaten. They look like humans, although they have a uniquely odd behavior.

Interactions: Ringo no kai appear in the evenings at houses near where they are planted. They ask the residents to feed them poop. If the residents cooperate, the ringo no kai eats it up with gusto, exclaiming over and over how delicious it is. Then, the ringo no kai presents its own stool to the residents of the house and demands that they partake as well.

Origin: Ringo no kai come from the folklore of Akita Prefecture, but similar stories are found in other prefectures with other kinds of fruit. Tantan kororin from neighboring Miyagi Prefecture is another well known scatological fruit yōkai.

Legends: Long ago, near the village of Kakunodate, an elderly man lived all alone. One evening, a strange man came to his house. The visitor asked the elderly man to feed him poop. The man was shocked at such an unusual request, but the stranger repeated the request over and over, even begging to be fed feces. Eventually, the old man relented. He brought his guest plateful of excrement, which was devoured with gusto. The visitor exclaimed over and over again, “How delicious!”

When he was finished eating, the visitor got up as if to leave. But instead, he reached behind his back and excreted a hot, steaming pile of feces into his hands and presented it to the old man. “Here, try this!” he demanded. The old man was at a loss for words, but the stranger kept insisting, until finally the old man sampled the excrement.

It was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. The old man screamed with delight as he gobbled down the stranger’s poop.

From them on, night after night, the strange man appeared at the elderly man’s house and they feasted on each other’s dung. But eventually, the old man began to think that, no matter how delicious his guest’s poop was, the situation was incredibly suspicious. So one night as the visitor was leaving, the man grabbed a nearby cleaver and swung it at the stranger. The cleaver carved into his back and he let out a scream. Then he ran out of the house into the night.

When morning came, the old man went outside and followed the stranger’s footprints. The led around his house to the back garden, all the way up to an old apple tree. The tree’s trunk had a hideous gash from the cleaver carved into it. The stranger had been the spirit of the apple tree all along, and the poop that the old man had been feasting upon was the unpicked apples that had begun to rot on its branches.