Fukusaki: Yanagita Kunio's Birthplace and the Yokai Benches

What is there

Yanagita Kunio was born in 1875 in the village of Tsujikawa, and the small house of his childhood still stands beside the memorial museum that holds his books and papers. In the park on the hill behind it a kappa named Gajirō rises from the pond every few minutes and a tengu swings out over the path, and across the town more than twenty benches carry life-size yokai figures to sit beside: a kappa, a tengu, a snow woman, a nue. The museum is free; the park is open ground. The town is a short taxi ride from Fukusaki station on the Bantan line.

Why here

Yanagita wrote in his memoirs of the kappa his childhood town believed lived in the Ichikawa river, and of the small house that made him think about how families lived. The tales of Tōno he published in 1910 were the start of folklore as a discipline in Japan, and the town has taken the creatures of that discipline as its emblem. The figures are modern sculptures; the records they stand for are in the articles.

Yokai you will meet

• Kappa 河童 — Gajirō in the park pond, and the kappa of the Ichikawa river that Yanagita remembered from his childhood.
• Tengu 天狗 — The tengu that swings over the park path, and a bench of its own in the town.
• Yuki-onna 雪女 — One of the yokai benches: the snow woman, sitting in a town where it rarely snows.
• Nue 鵺 — One of the yokai benches: the nue, with the four animals of its body.

Getting there

Fukusaki Station (JR Bantan Line). Taxi about ten minutes, or about 2 km on foot.

• Open in Google Maps (external link)
• Open in OpenStreetMap (external link)
• Official site (external link)