Aburasumashi

Aburasumashi is a kaii transmitted in the Kusatsumi Pass in Amakusa District, Kumamoto Prefecture (now Amakusa City). It is said to appear on the mountain path dressed as an elderly figure wearing a straw raincoat and leaning on a walking stick, muttering "Long ago, I was pressing oil…" According to its origin tale, the spirit of someone who stole oil in life became transformed into this phenomenon, and it is known as a kaii of the pass itself.

In representative accounts of its appearance, a grandmother crossing Kusatsumi Pass while carrying her grandchild spoke of how "an oil-squeezer used to appear here", after which a voice called out "It still appears now" and an elderly figure manifested. The spirit of an oil merchant who stole oil from a travelling merchant in life is said to have undergone this transformation. As a frontier phenomenon of the pass, the legend carries the character of a cautionary tale about cause and effect.

The most notable recorded example appears in Hamada Takakazu's *Amakusa Shimaminsokushi* (1932). The phenomenon is discussed in folklorists' research on kaii of the Kyushu mountains and passes, and is arranged in Murakami Kenji's editorial *Nihon Yōkai Daijiten* (Kadokawa Shoten, 2005). The International Research Center for Japanese Studies maintains records of Amakusa cases in its kaii and yokai folklore database.

As a type involving the transformation of a spirit who stole oil, it shares affinities with Omi's oil-child and the oil-priest of Mount Atago near Kyoto. Within the framework of elderly-figure kaii of passes, it is grouped alongside Nurikabe and Okuri-oji.