Koji Kashin

Kashin Koji (果心居士), also called Shippo Gyoja (七宝行者, Pilgrim of the Seven Treasures), is a Japanese folkloric/legendary character of a late Muromachi period magician. There are stories of him performing magic before Nobunaga Oda, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, Mitsuhide Akechi, Hisahide Matsunaga, and others, but his historicity is questioned.

Life According to the "" (a book of desultory gossip stories) from the end of the Azuchi–Momoyama period, Koji was born in Echigo Province. Although he was initially a Buddhist priest at the Kōfuku-ji Temple in Yamato Province (or on Mount Kōya When a man did not believe this magic, he used a toothpick to stroke the man's tooth, which dangled as if it would fall out.

Koji was especially close with Hisahide Matsunaga. Hisahide challenged Koji by asking: "I have experienced many dreadful scenes [on the] battlefield, but can you still make me feel scared?" Koji conjured the phantom of Hisahide's wife, who had died several years before, and frightened Hisahide.

In 1574

A Japanese Miscellany by Lafcadio Hearn contains "The Story of Kashin Koji", in which some time after tricking Oda with the kakemono, Koji is invited to a party by Mitsuhide Akechi, drinks ten bowls of sake, summons a ship to come out of a drawing, and he boards the ship and disappears into the drawing.

According to "Old Man's Tea Talk" (古老茶話), an essay by Ei Kashiwazaki (柏崎永以), during the Edo period, in July of 1612, someone named Koji Inshin (因心居士, the first character different from the one in Koji Kashin's name) appeared before Ieyasu Tokugawa in Shizuoka. Ieyasu, who already knew Koji, asked, "How old are you now?"and Koji replied he was eighty-eight years old. If this person was Koji Kashin, then it means that he was born in 1524.

According to the modern stage magician and practitioner , the stories of Koji's tricks can be explained by the principles of modern stage illusion. According to the game, Kashin Koji transformed Sugitani Zenjūbō into a woman to help him escape after Sugitani's historical assassination attempt against Oda Nobunaga failed, hence why Sugitani appears female in the game. A homonymous character in Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, a clone of (also homonymous with a folkloric figure) Jiraiya. The main antagonist in the 2020 video game Nioh 2. The Knife and the Sword manga.