Yama-bito

The term "yamabito (山人^?)" or sanjin, as understood in Japanese folklore, has come to be applied to a group, some scholars claim, of ancient, marginalized people, dating back to some unknown date during the Jomon period of Japanese history.

The term itself has been translated as "Mountain People", or as Dickins interprets the word, simply, "Woodsman", but there is more to it than that. It is from texts recorded by historian Kunio Yanagita that introduced, through their legends and , of the concept of Kamikakushi, or, being "spirited away", into Japanese popular culture.

According to Yanagita, the Yamabito were "descendants of a real, separate aboriginal race of people who were long ago forced into the mountains by the Japanese who then populated the plains" during the Jomon era.

Yanagita wrote down these folktales in the book Tono Monogatari, though as author Sadler notes:

One of the concepts Yanagita presents in Tono Monogatari is that of, literally, being spirited away, or kamikakushi. As author Sadler relates:

The stories found within Tono Monogatari are not without their detractors. Minakata Kumagusu was highly critical of Yangita's research, "heaping severe criticism and ridicule on belief that ... the Yamabito ever existed." According to records, between 1915-1916, the two scholars exchanged letters debating the existence of the Yamabito. In one famous letter, dated December, 1916, Minakata makes the following claim that while working with an assistant in the Wakayama region of Japan:

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