The Jikininki is a creature from Japanese folklore, a deceased human, reincarnated into the form of a ghost struck with unquenchable hunger for human corpse-flesh, driving them to devour the dead. It is uncertain if Jikininki originated with Lafcadio Hearn's 1904 story collection "Kaidan", or whether they are genuine mythological creatures, but they indisputably have their roots in the Buddhist preta, or "hungry ghosts", greedy humans reborn into the form of spirits hungering for disgusting and repulsive things, such as blood or feces, and occasionally, although not universally, corpses. The "hungry ghost" concept must have entered the Japanese cultural sphere together with Buddhism from China.