Hitori kakurenbo means hide-and-seek for one person. It is also called a spirit rite, and sometimes one-person tag. A stuffed doll stands in for the other player.
A thread on 2channel's occult board listed the name on 18 April 2007. On 21 April, one poster set out the method in detail. Later, others said they tried it, and they posted what they said happened. That is how the name left the first thread. In a thread opened in June 2007, a post signed as the first poster claimed many early "players" were him.
This page does not give the steps. The doll, the hour, and the salt are the sort of detail a how-to needs. They are also the sort of detail that turns an article into instructions. The sources already do that. We do not.
Where people say it came from
Two accounts compete, and they do not agree.
One says the game was already known in Kansai and Shikoku, played beside kokkuri-san. In that telling, it was a known game before it was posted.
The other says a university club spread the story on purpose. They wanted to study how rumours move. That claim comes from a 2010 audiobook. It names only "a certain university."
Both can be partly true. An old game can be rewritten, and a new post can pretend to be old. The posts of 21 April 2007 mark the moment the instructions became easy to copy.
After the post
A video film called Hitori Kakurenbo came out in 2008. A cinema version opened on 23 May 2009. A late-night TV Tokyo show covered it in June 2007. The public trace is the thread, a June 2007 TV segment, and the films.
Kokkuri-san at least has a philosopher's book from 1887. It also has a reported arrival at Shimoda. This one has a post, a disagreement about an older game, and a doll. The doll is the only body the story gives you.
