Skip to content
inugami
EntityQ1150212· pop 20· linked from 277 articles

thumb|"Inugami" from the Hyakkai Zukan by [[Sawaki Suushi]] upright|thumb|"Inugami" from the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō by [[Sekien Toriyama. The one on the bottom-left that looks like a child is a "shirachigo" (白児, "white infant") that was either the inugami's pupil or the yōkai child of a disabled person.]] thumb|Inugami (犬神) from Bakemono no e (化物之繪, c. 1700), Harry F. Bruning Collection of Japanese Books and Manuscripts, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, [[Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. |alt=]]

Wikidata facts

Country
Japan
Image
Suushi Inugami.jpg
Show 3 more facts
indigenous to
Western Japan
different from
Inukami
superhuman feature or ability
spirit possession
Sources (3)

via Wikidata · CC0

~12 min read

Encyclopedic overview

8 sections
Contents
  • Origins
  • Having inugami
  • In popular culture
  • See also
  • Notes
  • References
  • Works cited
  • General sources

thumb|"Inugami" from the Hyakkai Zukan by [[Sawaki Suushi]] upright|thumb|"Inugami" from the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō by [[Sekien Toriyama. The one on the bottom-left that looks like a child is a "shirachigo" (白児, "white infant") that was either the inugami's pupil or the yōkai child of a disabled person.]] thumb|Inugami (犬神) from Bakemono no e (化物之繪, c. 1700), Harry F. Bruning Collection of Japanese Books and Manuscripts, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, [[Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. |alt=]]

, like kitsunetsuki, is a spiritual possession by the spirit of a dog, widely known about in western Japan. They seemed firmly rooted until recent years in eastern Ōita Prefecture, Shimane Prefecture, and a part of Kōchi Prefecture in northern Shikoku, and it is also theorized that Shikoku, where no foxes (kitsune) could be found, is the main base of the inugami. Furthermore, traces of belief in inugami exists in the Yamaguchi Prefecture, all of Kyushu, even going past the Satsunan Islands all the way to the Okinawa Prefecture. In the Miyazaki Prefecture, the Kuma District, Kumamoto Prefecture, and Yakushima, the local dialect pronounces it "ingami" and in Tanegashima, they are called "irigami." It can also be written in kanji as 狗神.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “inugami” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (4)