Konaki-jiji (Tokushima)

Konaki-jiji (also Ko-naki-jiji) is a yokai of the mountains of western Tokushima. The figure draws travellers near by crying in the form of an infant; when picked up out of pity, it grows heavier and heavier like a stone, eventually crushing or immobilising the one who carries it. The narrative carries a folkloric pattern of the danger hidden in the cry of the weak in the mountain journey. The canonical narrative places the figure on a mountain road in western Tokushima at dusk or in the dead of night, where the cry of an infant is heard. Following the cry brings the traveller to what appears to be an abandoned baby; when the traveller picks the child up, the body suddenly grows heavy, the bearer cannot put it down, and at last is pinned and cannot move. Oral tradition records the use of a length of wisteria vine as a means of release. Yanagita Kunio's Yokai Dangi (Showa 31, 1956) collects a case from Mima-gun, Tokushima. Fujisawa Morihiko's Nihon Densetsu Sosho and other modern folklore studies, Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005), and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database compile the cases. Adjacent close-encounter yokai include the kawa-akago (riverside crying) and sune-kosuri (clinging to the legs). Regional dialectal names in Tokushima include "Gogyanaki."