Kappabuchi Pool

Kappabuchi (カッパ淵) is a small pool on the Ashiaraikawa creek behind Joken-ji Temple in Tono, Iwate Prefecture, recorded in Yanagita Kunio's Tono Monogatari (1910) as the setting of several kappa tales. Tales 55 to 59 of the Tono Monogatari, transmitted from the local storyteller Sasaki Kizen, record stories of kappa fathering children, drowning horses, and reaching out to pull people into the water, depicting the Tono kappa with a distinctively red face. The pool stands next to Joken-ji, a Soto Zen temple whose gate features the rare "kappa komainu" guardian dogs, said to commemorate a kappa that helped extinguish a temple fire. The site, alongside the Tono City Museum and the Densho-en folk park, forms the core of the Tono folkloric landscape, and a fishing rod baited with cucumber is kept at the pool by tradition.