The world of anime is populated by a wide variety of colorful and unique figures derived from long-established stock characters of Japanese culture. In addition to their memorable visual traits, these stock characters can be accompanied by special aural or musical attributes that add to the richness of their characterization.

Such is the case of the biwa hōshi, an infrequent but notable character in anime based on the real-life blind Buddhist monks who traveled Japan on foot during the samurai era playing their biwa and dispensing demons by means of mysterious supernatural powers.

The sharp, dramatic “twang” of the biwa, combined with the biwa hōshi’s bold recitation style, immediately fills the modern Japanese mind with a romanticized sense of old-world atmosphere and high drama.

This presentation examines the daily lives and distinctive performance traditions of the biwa hōshi, drawing on Japanese scholars Hugh De Ferranti, William Malm, Helen McCullough, Barbara Ruch, and Alison Tokita. With a historical model in place, we can examine how this figure is re-imagined visually and musically in characters from two famous anime: Watanabe Shinichirō’s “Shige” from the 2004 series Samurai Champloo, who controls a group of zombies in a quest to find buried treasure, and Tezuka Osamu’s “Biwa Hōshi,” an enigmatic sage and fearsome demon killer who features prominently both in Tezuka’s 1969 series Dororo and in the wildly successful remake of this show currently airing in Japan.