Yamabiko

◆ The legend

Call out "Hello!" toward a mountain or a valley, and a moment later the very same voice comes back from the other side. Long ago, people decided that someone living in the mountains must be calling back, and they named that someone the yamabiko. Call, and it calls back; laugh, and it laughs back. But no matter how hard you search in the direction of the voice, it is said you will never find it.

It is a yokai of voice alone, yet the Edo-period artist Toriyama Sekien gave it a body: a small beast standing among the rocks. In some regions, people said the voice was the mountain god answering; in others, that something fond of mimicking people was hiding in the hills. Someone in the mountains is answering you. The yamabiko may have been born from the mix of awe and closeness that people who lived beside the mountains felt toward them.