Inugami

Inugami (犬神^?, lit. "dog god"), like kitsunetsuki, is a spiritual possession by the spirit of a dog, widely known about in western Japan. Until recent years, they were often seen in the eastern Ōita Prefecture, Shimane Prefecture, and a part of Kōchi Prefecture in northern Shikoku, and it's 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.

The phenomenon of inugami spiritual possession was a kojutsu (also called "kodō" or "kodoku," a greatly feared ritual for employing the spirits of certain animals) that was already banned in the Heian period that was thought to have spread throughout the population, and it was known to involve cutting off the head of a starving dog and burying the dog at a crossroads to inflame its grudges as people pass over its heads so that its spirit would turn into a curse that could be used.

Another method was to bury the dog alive leaving only its head sticking out or attach the dog to a supporting pole, put some food in front of the dog, cut the dog's neck just when it is about to starve so that the head would fly towards and bite at the food, burn the dog into mere bones, put the remains into a vessel, and deify it. By doing so, it will spiritually possess that person forever, granting their wishes. Another method was to set several dogs to fight against each other, give the one dog remaining alive some fish, cut off that dog's head, and eat the remaining fish. In Yamaga, Hayami District, Ōita Prefecture (now Kitsuki), there were actual cases where a miko did cut off a dogs' heads this way, dried the maggots that gathered at the heads, and sold them calling it inugami, and there were also people who were thankful for these and bought them.

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