Onigafuchi Village

The Village of Onigafuchi, known in the modern era as Hinamizawa is a fictional village in Japan featured in the anime Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni. While Higurashi is take place in 1983, the past of Hinamizawa is a major plot point. Hinamizawa is home to a mysterious local disease that causes violent behavior in those infected with it, once the infection reaches a certain level. During the feudal era of Japan, Hinamizawa, then known as Onigafuchi, or "The Demon's Abyss", was home to a group of villagers who believed they were descended from demons. This was due to stories about a mass Hinamizawa Syndrome outbreak that resulted in widespread bloodshed. Not knowing about the infection, the villagers believed that those villagers with demonic blood had reverted the their evil nature, and massacred the fully human inhabitants of the village. In order to stop this from happening again, they made human sacrifices to the god of the their local Shinto shrine, Oyashiro. On the night of an event called the Watanagashi Festival in June, the villagers would take a sacrificial victim, torture them, before finally having a priest or shrine maiden cut open their intestines with a sword, scythe, or sharpened hoe-like tool. The victim would be left to bleed to death as they villagers all took a piece of their intestines and floated it in the river, symbolically washing away the sins of the village. In addition to this violent ritual, the Hinamizawans also tortured and murdered those who violated the "laws" of Oyashiro, including outsiders entering the town, villagers attempting to leave the town, and those who enter forbidden areas in the shrine to Oyashiro. In this match, there will be 20 total Onigafuchi villagers.