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The Myth

About thirty years before the tale was told, a farmer’s wife from Malmkrog was harvesting grain on a field high up the mountainside. Her small son, no more than four or five years old, sat in the shade of a few sheaves, restless and bored while she worked.

Below the field the slope dropped steeply into an old, half-cleared forest. It was late afternoon, and the village bells began to ring for vespers. According to custom and belief, people were meant to stop their labor and return home at that hour, but the woman remained in the field.

Then from the nearby woods came a sudden uproar.

The boy later said he heard the crack of whips echoing through the trees, along with loud shouting and calls of “Hi!” and “Ho!” It sounded as if many unseen men were straining to haul a heavily laden cart up the steep, trackless mountainside. The noise of wheels, crashing wood, and clattering harness rang through the forest, though no one could be seen.

Panic seized the woman. She ran to her child, snatched up what she had brought from home, and took his hand. Behind them the din grew louder — the shouts, the cracking whips, the grinding of the burdened wagon — as if the unseen drivers were drawing ever nearer.

Without looking back, she fled with the boy down the mountain toward the village.

That evening she told the men who had already returned from their work:

“When the bell rang for vespers, they came with the Heavy Wagon. Never again will I stay on the Hattert once the church bell rings.”

And from that time on, people remembered the tale and kept to the old custom, leaving the mountain fields when the bells began to sound.

Tradition / Region: Japanese Mythology
Alternate Names: Abumiguchi
Category: Object, Yokai

The Myth

On old battlefields where grass grows over rusted iron and forgotten bones, an Abumi-guchi is said to wait.

Long ago, it was nothing more than a stirrup—one of a matched pair belonging to a warrior who rode into battle and never returned. When the fighting ended, the dead were buried or burned, the living went home, and the stirrup was left behind in the dirt, still shaped to bear a foot that would never again step into it.

As years passed, the abandoned object awakened.

The iron frame sprouted coarse fur, and where the foot once rested, a mouth formed—wide, soft, and wordless. Thus the Abumi-guchi was born, a tsukumogami shaped not by malice, but by longing.

Unlike many yōkai, the Abumi-guchi does not roam. It does not hunt, trick, or frighten travelers. It remains where it fell, half-buried in grass or mud, facing the direction from which its master once rode. It waits patiently, endlessly, believing that the warrior will return to claim it.

Those who encounter an Abumi-guchi describe it as gentle and sorrowful. It does not attack. It does not speak. If approached, it merely watches with its hollow mouth, as though expecting a familiar presence. Some say it shifts slightly when footsteps approach, mistaking strangers for its long-dead owner.

The Abumi-guchi is said to endure until it finally decays completely, or until time itself erases the memory of the battle. Until then, it remains a symbol of loyalty without reward—an object bound to a purpose that can never again be fulfilled.

In Japanese folklore, the Abumi-guchi stands as a quiet reminder that even tools can grieve, and that devotion, when left behind, may linger far longer than the lives that once gave it meaning.

Gallery

Sources

Yokai.com contributors. (n.d.). Abumi-guchi. In Yokai.com — The Japanese Mythology Database, from https://yokai.com/abumiguchi/

Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Abumi-guchi. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abumi-guchi

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How to Invite The Abumi-guchi