It is from texts recorded by historian Kunio Yanagita that introduced, through their legends and tales, of the concept of being spirited away[4] 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"[5] during the Jōmon period.
As author Sadler relates: A young girl is at play under the pear tree in her yard one evening toward dusk, and in the next instant she is gone, vanished.
Thirty years later the occupants of her old family home are surprised by a visitor whom they recognize at once as this child, now grown to womanhood.
In one famous letter, dated December, 1916, Minakata makes the following claim that while working with an assistant in the Wakayama region of Japan: while collecting insect specimens, half-naked in the countryside one hot day eight years ago, we came charging down the mountain slope, waving our sticks and insect nets at a group of village woman at the base of the mountain.