Honjo Yokoamiほんじょよこあみ

Passed down around Edo’s Honjo district, the Okuri-Chochin is understood as a strange guiding fire that appears between safety and dread on night roads. Its light sways with a person’s steps and breath, keeps its distance while leading ahead, yet never allows touch. At times it slips to one’s rear or flank to upset direction, and when accompanied by a clapper-like sound it is recorded under the alias “Okuri Hyojiki.” The “Lantern Boy” of Ishihara Warigesui is a formless Odawara-lantern flame that circles on all sides and vanishes when approached, regarded as the same phenomenon as the Okuri-Chochin. In Mukojima it is called the “Okuri-Chochin Fire,” believed to light one’s footing and ensure safe passage, with cases linked to offerings at Ushijima Myojin. Though it rarely causes direct harm, it can lead travelers astray, so locals advise not to chase it, to keep a set distance and pass it by, or to bow at a shrine or temple to seek protection.

Aligned with the clapper-wood anomaly counted among the Seven Wonders of Honjo. Understood less as a corporeal yokai and more as a name for an aural phenomenon. It appears in step with the steady rhythm of night-watch clappers, most notable at corners, near water, and in rain. Visual sightings are scarce, and turning back reveals only a lingering presence. An urban ghost tale tied to local customs of community patrols, paired with the kindred “Okuri Chochin.” The lore resists heavy anthropomorphism, and its hallmark is that sound itself becomes the act of “seeing-off.”

A classic case of tanuki-bayashi reported around Honjo in Edo. The sound layers like flute, drum, and shamisen, seeming to recede as you approach and shifting direction when you turn a corner. It often cuts off abruptly near waterways and moat edges. While common folk sometimes explained it as refraction and echoes caused by wind and terrain, people of the time also took it as the work of tanuki. Counted among the Seven Wonders of Honjo, it was frequently mentioned in sideshows and popular literature, with the names “Baka-bayashi” and “Tanuki-bayashi” used interchangeably. Notably, there are no accompanying sightings of a physical form, making it a sound-only apparition of high record value. Folklore warns that chasing it can leave you lost and wandering into the outskirts by dawn, so one should stop midway and cover the ears.

Told as an urban-legend-style ghost tale from Edo’s Honjo district, this curiosity lies in the pairing of objects and institutions rather than vivid supernatural feats. The phenomenon itself is scarcely described; the very adoption of a drum for duty is treated as uncanny. Shaped by the locale, samurai compound regulations, and a city prone to fires, the oddity of sound lingered in memory and became a tale. A variant recounts that striking a wooden clapper produced a drum’s sound, hinting at auditory error or transmission drift. Sources appear in local topographies and essays, and typically lack specific origins or named figures. Later creative retellings add ghosts of fire brigades or watchmen, but older lore is restrained, focusing on the strange pairing of residence and watchtower.

A classic Edo urban apparition that finds sacred presence in familiar natural anomalies. The single-bladed reed form signals a communal storytelling device that shares unease without fixing a cause. The anomaly is sensed less as a property of the plant than as an atmosphere of place, told alongside night silence and the sound of water. Memorial rites, posted placards, and small shrines are often noted as local pacification practices, and like other Seven Wonders (such as the ginkgo that never sheds its leaves), the tale pointedly withholds rational explanation and leaves the strangeness intact. Later embellishments personify people and incidents, but older accounts remain origin-unknown and phenomenon-focused.

A recorded marvel revered and feared as the very phenomenon of an ancient chinkapin that shed no leaves. Understood less as a personified will and more as the ambience of the land or the work of a tree spirit, it is told alongside other Honjo Seven Mysteries such as Okehazubori and the Foot-Washing Mansion as an enigma that reveals no cause. Named in Mimibukuro and in local gazetteers and collections of strange tales, it is not remembered for direct harm but for an uncanny presence that keeps people away. It aligns with tree veneration and the notion of household guardian trees, with hyperbole like needing no sweeping of fallen leaves to emphasize the marvel. The identification of the actual tree is debated and unconfirmed.