子泣き爺

Konaki Jijii

Kanji: 子泣き爺
Kana: こなきじじい
Pronunciation: ko-na-ki-ji-jii

Translation: Crybaby Old Man — "old man who cries like a child."
Alternate names: Konaki-jiji; Konakijiji; Gogyanaki
Origin: Edo period mountain folklore from Tokushima Prefecture, Shikoku.

Habitat: Mountain roads and old pilgrimage trails in Shikoku, especially the Oboke Gorge in Miyoshi City, Tokushima.
Diet: None. Konaki Jijii is a spirit form and does not feed.

Abilities

• Raises its own body weight to a stone-like mass.
• Produces the cry of a human newborn.
• Pins a carrier to the ground and clings to the body.
• Has a dual form: an old man's body with a baby's voice, or an infant body with an old man's head.

Weaknesses

• A traveler who refuses to pick the figure up takes no harm.
• The spirit lets go and disappears once the victim releases it and walks away.

Overview

Konaki Jijii is a Shikoku mountain yokai known as the Crybaby Old Man. Konaki Jijii cries like a baby on lonely forest roads in Tokushima, then turns deadly when a traveler picks it up.

Appearance

Konaki Jijii has the body of a small old man with a deeply wrinkled face and the clear voice of a newborn. Konaki Jijii carries a walking stick and wears a straw raincoat over over-sized baby clothes. The face is thin, the limbs are bony, and the eyes are deep-set. Travelers see Konaki Jijii alone on a path, where the figure stays in the leaves like an abandoned child. The look is helpless on purpose — it is the core of the trap.

Behavior

Konaki Jijii cries on a quiet road at dusk and waits for a passerby. When a traveler picks the "baby" up out of pity, Konaki Jijii starts to raise its weight, and the mass grows up to hundreds of kilograms. Konaki Jijii clings to the carrier so the carrier cannot pull free, and the weight pins the carrier to the ground. Konaki Jijii does not speak and does not follow — the cry alone does the work.

Interactions

Encounters happen to lone travelers on mountain roads in Shikoku, most often at twilight, and Konaki Jijii is a high risk to a single victim. The traditional response in Tokushima is simple: ignore any crying child found alone on a forest path. Konaki Jijii shares this carry-and-crush trap with related Japanese yokai like obariyon, ubume, and nure-onna, and folklorists compare the spirit to the Scandinavian myling, the Slavic poroniec, and the Germanic Aufhocker. Travelers can visit the Konaki Jijii statue at Oboke Gorge in Miyoshi City as a real-world marker of the legend.

Other Forms

Some accounts say Konaki Jijii appears as a small stone statue along a path before it cries, then changes form when a traveler comes close. The Gogyanaki variant in eastern Shikoku is louder and more aggressive. In modern media Konaki Jijii appears as a recurring character in Shigeru Mizuki's GeGeGe no Kitarō, as a playable yokai in Yo-kai Watch, as a boss in Nioh and Nioh 2, and as the basis for Onbusuman in Dandadan.