You are walking a mountain road in Kōchi at night. Then a small cry starts up: chi, chi, chi. It sounds like a sparrow. It stays with you. Sometimes it is ahead of you, and sometimes behind. People in old Tosa called this yosuzume, the night sparrow. Tosa is the old name for Kōchi Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku.
The name is two plain characters. 夜 (yo) means "night." 雀 (suzume) means "sparrow."
What does Yosuzume look like?
That depends on where you ask. Each place that knows it tells it a little differently.
- Tanokuchi and Tomiyama, Kōchi. Here it is a bird yokai that comes out at night. It cries chi, chi, chi, like a sparrow. Tanokuchi village was in Hata District and is now part of Kuroshio. Tomiyama is now part of Shimanto.
- Kitagawa, Aki District, Kōchi. Here it is not a bird. It is something like a black butterfly. It cries chat, chat. It flies into the front of a walker's kimono, and even inside their umbrella.
- Minamiuwa District, Ehime. Here it is a kind of moth. The moths come flying so thickly that nobody can walk the road.
- Hongū, Wakayama (now part of Tanabe). Here it never shows itself. You only hear it crying chi, chi, chi in the dark.
How it follows you
The yosuzume appears at night on mountain roads. It follows people as they walk. It flies in front of them and behind them.
In Hongū, it follows you endlessly along a dark mountain road. In Kitagawa, the noise can grow so loud that you cannot walk on. But the Kitagawa story has a way out. If you calm yourself, it disappears on its own.
Bad luck, or a guard?
Places also disagree on what it means.
In Tanokuchi, being "possessed" by a yosuzume was bad luck. Here, "possessed" simply means being followed by one.
Tomiyama had a spell to drive it away. There were two versions. One went: "Chi-chi-chi crying bird, do you miss the shinagi stick? If so, one bang!" The other called on the gods: "Chi-chi-chi crying bird, blow it away soon, divine wind of Ise."
In Ehime, the swarm of moths was a sign. A yamainu, a mountain dog, was about to appear.
In Wakayama, it was not bad luck at all. While the yosuzume followed you, a wolf was protecting you. It kept the evil things of the mountain away.
The manga artist Mizuki Shigeru adds one more rule in his book Yōkika (2004). Catch a yosuzume carelessly, he writes, and you will get night blindness.
Its cousins: okuri-suzume and tamoto-suzume
Two other "sparrows" follow walkers in the same way. Okuri-suzume, the "sending-off sparrow," is told in Nara and Wakayama. Tamoto-suzume, the "sleeve sparrow," is told in parts of Kōchi and Ehime. In Higashitsuno (Kōchi) and Jōhen (Ehime), the tamoto-suzume is treated as the same creature as the yosuzume.
The tamoto-suzume stories add details of their own.
- Tsunoyama, Kōchi. It chirps chi, chi, chi, exactly like a sparrow. It follows walkers, in front and behind. When two or more people walk together, often only one of them hears it. It warns that mountain dogs or wolves will appear. There is a spell for it: "Ō-shiraga, ko-shiraga ... abiraunkensowaka." Chant it and stand up three tree branches. Then it stops following you, and no wolves come.
- Kubokawa, Kōchi. Nobody sees it here. A chiri, chiri sound, like a rolling bell, follows from behind. If it flies into your sleeve, that is bad luck. So people passed by daytime, or in groups. Or they walked gripping their sleeves.
- Higashitsuno, Kōchi. People here also gripped their sleeves as they walked. That way, the tamoto-suzume could not possess them.
- Jōhen, Ehime. Its cries can block your way, so that you cannot walk on.
Where it comes from
The oldest written record in our sources is from 1942. Katsurai Kazuo wrote about Tosa's mountain villages in the magazine Tabi to Densetsu. His title was "Tosa no sanson no 'yōbutsu to kaii'": the monsters and strange things of Tosa's mountain villages. He wrote about it again in Tosa Minzokuki (1948). Ichihara Rin'ichirō's Tosa no Yōkai (1977) records it too.
The same small cry carries opposite meanings. In one place it meant bad luck. In another, it meant a wolf was guarding you. In Ehime and Tsunoyama, it warned that wolves or mountain dogs were near.
One reading is that the little cry was heard as a messenger for a bigger animal. Whether that animal meant harm changed from valley to valley. The sources do not say this directly. What they do record is the advice. In Kubokawa, the safest way past was simple. Go by day, go with others, and keep a hand on your sleeve.
Go deeper
Books worth owning if this world pulls you in.
- The Book of Yokai →Michael Dylan FosterThe most readable scholarly introduction to yokai — where they come from, what they mean, and the major creatures.
- Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien →trans. Hiroko Yoda & Matt AltThe complete Edo-period bestiaries that so many of these entries trace back to, in full English translation.
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