Ittanmomen

Ittanmomen is a kaii recorded in the Kimotsuki District of Kagoshima Prefecture (Ōsumi Peninsula), where a bolt of white cotton cloth approximately ten meters in length is said to flutter through the evening sky. According to accounts, it drapes over the heads of pedestrians and children, wrapping around their necks and causing injury through suffocation or strangulation. It is known as a familiar evening phenomenon in the Ōsumi region.

In representative folklore accounts, at dusk a long white cloth—resembling a bolt of fabric—floats and billows above fields and paddies. It descends over the heads of passersby, coiling around their necks. Some accounts claim that if cut with a sharp blade, the cloth bleeds a red liquid.

Documented cases centre on the area around Takayama town (now Kimotsuki town) in the Ōsumi Peninsula. The phenomenon has been recorded in Kagoshima prefectural local materials and cited in *Nihon Yōkai Daijiten* (Kadokawa Shoten, 2005), compiled by Murakami Kenji, as well as in folklore studies by Yanagita Kunio and Sakurada Katsuari, and in the International Research Center for Japanese Culture's database of kaii and yokai folklore.

As a cloth or bolt-like kaii, Ittanmomen shares kinship with phenomena such as the Kyoto Kuro-roku-kuro-roku-dan (a tsukumogami-type being) and ghostly white fabrics reported elsewhere in Japan. Its distinctive feature is the dynamic image of flight through the evening sky.