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According to Hori, Tetsumonkai purportedly gouged out one of his own eyes as an offering to the Mount Yudano deities to save those suffering from the disease.

Folklorist and researcher Ichiro Hori, who was part of the original team of researchers studying the sokushinbutsu, notes that Honmyokai’s desire was to free people from suffering and illness.

But as the movie winds back to foreground instructor Hori’s POV, adding contextualizing reverse angles and extra information to every replayed moment after, a thornier reality emerges, one that absolves and complicates in equal measure.

Ms. Hori has sharply rejected that characterization: “I’ve been doing international volunteer work for over 30 years. I feel resentful,” she said at a July press conference announcing the WFWP’s lawsuit.

“We … are the victims of an incredibly discriminatory campaign that is unprecedented in a democratic country,” Moriko Hori, who heads the WFWP’s Japan office, said this week as hearings in her organization’s suit against the lawyer group opened in Tokyo.