ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Mimizuka

Okay kiddo, today we're going to talk about mimizuka. Mimizuka is a little bit scary because it is a monument in Japan that is made of human ears!

A long, long time ago, in the 16th century, there was a big battle in Japan. During the battle, the winning side wanted to show off how strong and powerful they were. So they cut off the ears of the people they had defeated, and made them into a big pile.

This pile of ears is what we call mimizuka - "mimi" means ear, and "zuka" means mound or pile. It was meant to show everyone how strong and brave the winning side was, but now it's seen as pretty creepy and gross.

But don't worry, kiddo, nobody adds ears to the mimizuka anymore. It's just a reminder of what happened a long time ago. It's important to remember our history, even the not-so-nice parts, so we can try to make sure things like that don't happen again in the future.