Inugami

Inugami (dog-deity) is a possession spirit of the Shikoku, Chugoku, and Kyushu regions. A dog spirit is said to attach to particular households (inugami-suji) and to be sent by them onto others, producing abdominal pain, fever, or fits of agitation; from the early modern period into the modern era the tradition served as a basis for caste-like discrimination against the so-called possessing households. Densities of tradition are recorded in the Kochi and Tokushima mountains, southern Ehime (Nanyo), Oita, and the Osumi peninsula; documents of the Tosa and Saeki domains preserve administrative references to inugami households. The Nihon Shoki (720 CE), Kogyoku Tenno 1 (642), records a curse using a dog, and the Konjaku Monogatari-shu volume 20 tale 7 ("The Onmyoji who dispatches a dog-spirit") gives a Heian-period analogue. Yanagita Kunio's Santo Mintanshu (1914) systematized the folk-studies treatment, and Hayami Yasutaka's Tsukimono-mochi Meishin codified the modern social-history reading. Adjacent possession spirits include the kitsune-mochi of San'in/Sanyo, kuda-gitsune of Nagano/Niigata, the saru-gami of the Shikoku mountains, and the gedo of Kyushu.