Kirishima Yamawaro Legend

The Kirishima yamawaro legend belongs to a southern Kyushu folk system in which kappa river spirits ascend to the mountains in autumn to become yamawaro and return as kappa in spring. In Kirishima, the yamawaro are described as one-eyed child figures roughly three shaku tall, fond of sumo, who sometimes help woodcutters and charcoal burners and sometimes throw stones at mountain huts or lead travelers astray. Their range covers the forests of Kirishima Jingu and the deeper slopes of the Kirishima range. Comparable tales are recorded for the Kuma district of Kumamoto and the Shiiba district of Miyazaki. The tradition is documented in Yanagita Kunio's Santo Mintan-shu and Tono Monogatari Shui, and in the folklore volumes of the Kagoshima prefectural history. It is a regional oral tradition outside the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki corpus.