おばけの方言、多様すぎない？【おたより回】#201
A listener's letter about 'Amojo,' a Nagasaki word for monsters that passed through three generations without anyone knowing its meaning, opens a wide-ranging episode on regional ghost vocabulary read through dialect diffusion theory. The conversation expands to cover a mysterious cluster of roofed wooden grave markers in Omihachiman, Shiga; a scathing 1963 book on grave physiognomy; and the folklore quietly living inside modern workplaces.
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What this episode answers
What is 'Amojo' in Nagasaki, and how did the word survive across three generations?
Amojo is Nagasaki children's language for a monster or yokai. Kaji's (カジ) grandfather, who was from Nagasaki, used it as a scare phrase passed down to his son, who in turn used it without knowing its meaning; since Kaji does not use it with his own children, the word is likely to vanish with this generation.
What words do different parts of Japan use for ghosts, and what does dialect diffusion theory reveal about them?
Ghost vocabulary varies sharply by region: Kinki and Chubu mostly use 'obake,' Tohoku uses 'mokko' and 'mouka,' Okinawa uses 'majimun' and 'yuri,' Shimane and Hiroshima use 'boiboi,' and Yamaguchi alone uses 'gongonchi.' Dialect diffusion theory treats 'obake' as the newer, Kinki-originated term, with Tohoku and Okinawan forms preserved as older survivals.
What are the rows of roofed wooden structures found in Omihachiman, Shiga Prefecture?
They are sanmai (三昧) — earth-burial grounds belonging to the dual-grave system, where a body is interred beneath wooden markers until they rot and the remains are then moved to a permanent stone grave. Because the sites now hold cremated remains from completed reburials, locals answer 'we don't do earth burial' when asked, producing a gap in understanding caused by missing context.
Among the animals credited with shapeshifting ability in Japanese folklore alongside foxes and tanuki, which can take the most forms?
The ten (貂, Japanese marten) tops the count at nine transformations, surpassing the fox at seven and the tanuki at eight, despite being far less familiar in everyday life.
How does the concept of 'company folklore' (kaisha minzokugaku) map onto academic folkloristic vocabulary?
It corresponds to the academic concept of 'vernacular' — the languages and customs independently formed and orally transmitted within small modern groups such as workplaces; 'company folklore' was praised as a 'magic of framing' that delivers this specialist term to ordinary life.
'Amojo' of Nagasaki — A Word That Crossed Three Generations Without a Meaning
The episode opened with a letter from listener Kaji (カジ), whose father would warn misbehaving children with the phrase 'Abojo will get you.' When Kaji, now an adult, asked his father what Abojo actually was, the father admitted he had no idea — his own grandfather had used the same word as a scare tactic. Research revealed that 'Amojo' is Nagasaki children's language for a monster or yokai, and sure enough, the grandfather had been from Nagasaki. The word traveled orally for three generations, its meaning unknown to anyone who spoke it. Since Kaji does not use it with his own children, it looks set to die out with this generation — a small, unintentional extinction of local vocabulary.
A Nationwide Ghost-Dialect Map — Read Through Dialect Diffusion Theory
Drawing on data from the '47-Prefecture Dialect Survey Points' (47都道府県方言百科地点), the hosts charted how each region names its ghosts. Tohoku clusters around 'mo'-initial words — 'mokko,' 'mouka,' 'monko' — while Hokkaido's 'amokko' is thought to be a transplant carried by migrants from Tohoku. In Kyushu, Fukuoka and Saga use 'obake,' Kumamoto says 'banban,' Nagasaki has its Amojo-family terms, and Miyazaki and the southern part of Kyushu use 'gamon' or 'gaganmo.' Okinawa stands entirely apart with 'majimun' and 'yuri.'
In the Chugoku region, Tottori and Okayama use 'obake,' while the Shimane–Hiroshima line shifts to 'boiboi.' Sandwiched between them, Yamaguchi stands alone with 'gongonchi' — a word found nowhere else in the country. The Chubu region is mostly 'obake,' with Toyama uniquely using 'momomo,' and Kinki is almost uniformly 'obake' throughout.
Dialect diffusion theory holds that Kinki is the cultural origin point, so words found farther away tend to be older. This would make 'obake' the younger term, while Tohoku's mo-words and Toyama's 'momomo' may preserve a shared older root.
The episode also touched on the saying 'kitsune nana-bake, tanuki hachi-bake, ten ku-bake' — foxes can take seven forms, tanuki eight, and ten (the Japanese marten) nine. Both hosts were genuinely surprised: the marten is little known in everyday life, yet folklore grants it the greatest shapeshifting power of all. In Iwate and Aomori, the musasabi (giant flying squirrel) is called 'bandori,' and local tradition holds that it appears at mountain huts disguised as a girl, causing sleep paralysis.
'Sanmai' in Omihachiman, Shiga — Wooden Grave Markers That Preserve Earth-Burial Memory
Listener Biwakonchou (ビワコンチョ) shared photographs of a puzzling site in Omihachiman (近江八幡市), Shiga: a field crowded with narrow, roofed wooden structures standing in rows. Kurokawa (黒川) identified them as sanmai (三昧) — land designated for earth burial. In the dual-grave system (両墓制), this is the 'burial grave' (埋め墓): the body is interred beneath a wooden marker and left until the wood rots, after which the remains are moved to a permanent stone grave.
Folklore researcher Hiraaishi (平足) had also visited the site and posted about it without resolving the mystery, but an X reply from someone who had spoken directly with a local funeral home in Omihachiman confirmed the sanmai identification. Because the sites now hold cremated remains transferred after reburial, locals answer 'we don't do earth burial' when asked — a mismatch produced by missing background knowledge on both sides.
A Scathing 1963 Book on Grave Physiognomy
Listener Dekushonari (デクショナリー) shared that their great-grandfather had been a researcher of bosogaku (墓相学) — the study of the auspiciousness of a grave's shape and location. Kurokawa happened to own a secondhand copy of a bosogaku book published in Showa 38 (1963), written by Yajima Fuji (矢島不二). The book refers to people without religious faith as 'chimpanzee-tribespeople' and names real families whose fortunes declined after building inauspicious graves — content that could not be published today. Even so, Kurokawa noted that the blunt language carries a sense of the seriousness with which people once approached the question of graves.
'Company Folklore' and the Vernacular — Bringing Fieldwork into Everyday Life
Listener Okachi (大勝) proposed the concept of 'kaisha minzokugaku' (会社民俗学, company folklore). As examples, he cited a company where every employee calls the Chinese place name Guangxi (広西) 'Ganshī' rather than the correct 'Gwangshī,' and a park where the playground equipment named after Godzilla was removed long ago but the name 'Godzilla Park' persists among neighborhood children.
Kurokawa explained both cases through the folkloristic concept of 'vernacular': where traditional 'folklore' describes the customs of regional communities, 'vernacular' describes the languages and practices independently formed and orally passed on within small modern groups — orchestras, offices, sports teams. Examples include the pre-performance charm 'Toi toi toi' among orchestral musicians, or an in-group meaning attached to a conductor's phrase that signals 'do it again' to the players. Because 'vernacular' rarely escapes specialist circles, Kurokawa praised 'company folklore' as a 'magic of framing' — an everyday phrase that carries the concept all the way into ordinary life.
Takeaways
- Ghost vocabulary across Japan maps cleanly onto dialect diffusion theory, with 'obake' as a newer Kinki export and Tohoku's mo-words or Okinawa's 'majimun' as older surviving forms.
- The roofed wooden grave-marker clusters in Omihachiman are sanmai — earth-burial grounds of the dual-grave tradition, now holding post-cremation remains after reburial, which is why locals say 'we don't do earth burial' when asked.
- 'Company folklore' matches the academic concept of 'vernacular,' and the act of coining a relatable everyday term is itself a bridge that carries specialist knowledge into ordinary life.
This article is edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. It is not an official summary — please listen to the episode itself.