Yanari (Aichi)

Yanari ("house creaker") is a household entity that produces unexplained sounds in a building: pillars creak, beams groan, and the house clatters with no one present. Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyo, yo no maki (Anei 5, 1776) depicts "Yanari" as small demons shaking pillars and clinging to beams of an old house. The text says, "in an old house, sounds at midnight are the work of Yanari." Cases are told in old, vacant, or poorly fitted houses, and analogous tales are scattered in Edo essays and kaidan. Toriyama Sekien's book is the primary source; later Yanagita Kunio-school folklore organized related cases of "yanari" and poltergeist-like entities. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) treats it as an entry, and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies Yokai Folklore Database also records it. Aichi has no distinct local layer; the entry treats Yanari as a generalized house-creak entity rooted in Sekien's image.