Kashabo (Wakayama)

Kashabo (also Kashanbo) is a child-form yokai recorded in the mountains and rivers of southern Kii (Tanabe, Wakayama and Kumano, southern Nara). The figure is a notable example of the mountain-child / kappa continuum of the southern Kii peninsula, said to live in the mountains in winter as a yama-warawa and on the rivers in summer as a kappa, changing habitat by season. The canonical narrative shows the figure in the form of a small child along mountain paths and riverbanks, fastening itself on travellers to challenge them to a wrestling bout, making sounds like trees being felled, or pulling livestock into the water. The seasonal-shift tradition, in which the figure climbs to the mountains in winter and descends to the rivers in summer, is paired with the Seko and Yamawaro of the Kyushu mountains and is a characteristic folklore of the southern Kii peninsula. Yanagita Kunio's Santo Mintanshu (Taisho 3, 1914) discussed Kashabo as a representative case of the mountain-child / kappa continuum. Kii and Kumano gazetteers from the early-modern and modern period, Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005), and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database compile southern-Kii cases.