Kechibi (けち火) is an

atmospheric ghost light Atmospheric ghost lights are lights (or fires) that appear in the atmosphere without an obvious cause. Examples include the onibi, hitodama and will-o'-wisp. They are often seen in humid climates. Tsunoda 1979, pages 11-53 According to legend, some ...

told in the legends of

Kōchi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Shikoku. Kōchi Prefecture has a population of 757,914 (1 December 2011) and has a geographic area of 7,103 km2 (2,742 sq mi). Kōchi Prefecture borders Ehime Prefecture to the northwest and ...

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It is stated to be the

onryō In Japanese traditional beliefs and literature, are a type of ghost () believed to be capable of causing harm in the world of the living, injuring or killing enemies, or even causing natural disasters to exact vengeance to "redress" the wron ...

of humans turned into balls of fire, and it is said to be possible to beckon for it by beating a

zōri Zori (), also rendered as zōri ( ja, , ), are thonged Japanese sandals made of rice straw, cloth, lacquered wood, leather, rubber, or—most commonly and informally—synthetic materials. They are a slip-on descendant of the tied-on sandal. ...

three times, or putting saliva on the zōri and calling for it. It is also said that the face of a human floats in the fire. They are also said to appear above water, and from this they are sometimes called a type of

funayūrei are spirits ( yūrei) that have become vengeful ghosts (onryō) at sea. They have been passed down in the folklore of various areas of Japan. They frequently appear in ghost stories and miscellaneous writings from the Edo Period as well as i ...

. In the

Nara Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Nara Prefecture has a population of 1,321,805 and has a geographic area of . Nara Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the north, Osaka Prefecture to the northwest, Wakayama P ...

, they are sometimes seen to be the same as the kaika janjanbi. According to the folklore researcher Rinichihara Ichihara's book, they are largely split into two different kinds, the ones that come forth from the flesh the instant a human dies, and those that come from humans while they sleep. As an example of the latter, there was a folktale as follows from the Kami Distrinct,

(now

Kami are the deities, divinities, spirits, phenomena or "holy powers", that are venerated in the Shinto religion. They can be elements of the landscape, forces of nature, or beings and the qualities that these beings express; they can also be the sp ...

) from the early

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

. When a man called Yoshiyan was walking through the road at night, beside the Monobe River, there was a kechibi turned over on the roadside. Upon coming closer to it, it would start rolling around, and when he chased it due to curiosity, the kechibi would also run away, and eventually he found himself entering a person's home. In that home, a man who was having a nightmare woke up, and said to his wife, "Yoshiyan was chasing me, so I ran away desperately." Also, as a folktale in the Takaoka District also from the Meiji Period, a man with much bravery named Kumaani Saitō witnessed a kechibi, and when he shouted, "come fly over here," it flew right in front of him. Saitō attempted to catch the fire alive, but each time he tried to catch it in his hand or tread on it with his feet the kechibi would disappear, and then reappear over and over. He finally captured it in both hands and took it back to his home, but at his home, when he opened his hand, the kechibi had already disappeared before he knew it. The next day, Kumaani had a fever of unknown cause, and died just like that. In the ''

Tosa Obake Zōshi The Tosa Obake Zōshi is a Japanese yōkai emaki. Set in the Tosa Province (now Kōchi Prefecture), and 16 sections about yōkai in total, its creation period has been determined to be from the Edo period. Its author is unknown. There are two kind ...

'' (author unknown), a

Yōkai Emaki are a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore. The word is composed of the kanji for "attractive; calamity" and "apparition; mystery; suspicious." are also referred to as , or . Despite often being translated as suc ...

from the

Tosa Province was a province of Japan in the area of southern Shikoku. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Tosa''" in . Tosa bordered on Awa to the northeast, and Iyo to the northwest. Its abbreviated form name was . In terms of the Gokishichidō syste ...

(now

) in the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

, it was written as 鬼火 and had furigana indicating a reading of "kechibi".

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