Kiso Okuri-inu Legend

The Kiso okuri-inu tradition is a mountain-road kaidan centered on Kiso District in Nagano, along the old Nakasendo, in which a dog follows a night traveler at a quiet distance. The okuri-inu is a beast of the mountain that, so long as the traveler does not fall, protects him; the moment he stumbles or stops, it attacks. It is said to appear especially between the post stations of Kiso, at the Torii-pass between Niekawa and Naraijuku, and is a representative folk tradition of the Kiso old road. The defining traits are that the rustling of leaves behind never ceases, that the figure cannot be seen when one turns, and that nothing remains by dawn. The story has three stages: the presence in back on the night mountain path, the rituals against falling or turning, and the dispelling at dawn and the return to the village. The doubled taboo "do not fall, do not turn" drives the logic of the tale, and the figure works as a moral fable for the boundary between mountain and village. As a remnant of wolf belief and dread of the yamainu, it is a typical case, connecting with the okuri-inu traditions of Gifu, Mie, and Kanagawa. The center is the old Nakasendo of Kiso District in Nagano (Kiso Town, Agematsu Town, and Nagiso Town). Among the eleven post stations of Kiso -- Niekawa, Toriipass, Yabuhara, Miyanokoshi, Fukushima, Agematsu, Suhara, Nojiri, Mitsuno, Tsumago, and Magome -- the mountain road as a whole forms the tradition area; the figure stands at the edge of the Mount Ontake-Shugen sphere. Yanagita Kunio's Tono Monogatari Shui, Yama no Jinsei, Yokai Dangi, the Nagano Prefectural Board of Education's Nagano Kenshi Minzoku-hen, and Kiso-gun records carry related tales; Edo-period Nakasendo travel records and essays note related yamainu tales.