What is Inunaki Village?
Inunaki Village (Inunaki-mura, “Howling Village”) is an urban legend that a village erased from the maps lies beyond Inunaki Pass, on the border between Miyawaka City and Hisayama Town in Fukuoka Prefecture. Spreading on internet message boards from the 1990s, together with the story of a sign reading “Beyond here, the Japanese Constitution does not apply,” it became one of Japan’s most famous scary stories. In 2020 it was even made into a film.
However, “Inunaki Village” is not a single story. The history of Inunakidani, a real village that existed from the Edo period; ghost rumors about the old Inunaki Tunnel built in the Showa era; a real crime committed near the tunnel in 1988; and the fictional village invented online. These originally separate things overlapped to form today’s legend. This article introduces each of them separately.
The kinds of rumors told
The rumors told online about Inunaki Village include the following.
- A sign at the village entrance reads “Beyond here, the Japanese Constitution does not apply.”
- The village is not on any map, and its people live cut off from the outside world.
- Anyone who enters is chased by villagers carrying sickles and axes.
- Cell phones lose signal near the village.
- A massacre once took place in the village, and it was abandoned.
All of these are unfounded inventions, and no record confirms the sign or the “villagers.” Because the plot closely resembles other stories of “villages erased from the maps” that spread around the same time, such as the legend of Sugisawa Village, which was modeled on the Tsuyama massacre in Okayama Prefecture, it is thought to have been created by association with them. Several books have covered Inunaki Village, but most of them simply retell the online rumors after the fact.
Inunakidani: the real village
On the north side of Inunaki Pass, said to be the setting of the rumors (today’s Inunaki district of Miyawaka City), there was once a real village called Inunakidani. According to tradition, it was a mountain village founded in the Genroku era (the 1690s) by foot soldiers (ashigaru) of the Fukuoka Domain who moved there. In the surrounding mountains, iron was also made from iron sand by the traditional tatara method.
Around 1865, at the end of the Edo period, the Fukuoka Domain built the “Inunaki Detached Residence” in these mountains as a refuge for the lord in an emergency. However, the senior retainer Kato Shisho and others who had pushed the plan were punished in a power struggle within the domain, and it is said the residence was never used for its intended purpose. Stone walls still remain at the site.
When the municipal system took effect in 1889, Inunakidani merged with neighboring villages and its name as a village disappeared. Later, Inunaki Dam (construction began in 1970, completed in 1994) was built on the upper Inunaki River; the residents of the settlement were relocated, and part of the former village sank beneath the reservoir. This history of a village that “really disappeared” is thought to have laid the groundwork for the legend of a village erased from the maps.
What matters here is that Inunakidani was not a closed village like the one in the rumors, but an ordinary mountain village where people lived their everyday lives.
The old Inunaki Tunnel and ghost rumors
The road over Inunaki Pass has long been a route linking Fukuoka with the Chikuho region and Kitakyushu. Work on the Inunaki Tunnel (today’s old Inunaki Tunnel) under the pass first began in the Meiji era but was halted because of technical and financial problems; construction resumed in the Showa era, and the tunnel opened in 1949.
After the new Inunaki Tunnel opened in 1975, the old road and old tunnel fell almost completely out of use. The deserted old road suffered from illegal dumping and became a hangout for biker gangs, and it was eventually closed. Today the entrance to the old tunnel is sealed with concrete blocks, and the old road is blocked by fences.
Even before the internet became widespread, there were rumors that the ghosts of people who died during the tunnel’s construction appeared there. With the atmosphere of an old, deserted tunnel, it came to be talked about as one of Kyushu’s most famous “haunted spots,” and was later tied to the rumors of Inunaki Village.
The 1988 crime
Behind the old Inunaki Tunnel’s reputation as the “center of terrifying rumors” also lies a tragic crime that really happened. In December 1988, a 20-year-old man was robbed of his car in Tagawa City, abducted, and killed near the old Inunaki Tunnel. Five youths aged 16 to 19 involved in the crime were arrested, and in 1991 the ringleader’s sentence of life imprisonment became final.
This crime is not a legend or a ghost story; it is a crime in which a young man’s life was really taken. Online, the crime is sometimes mixed together with rumors of the “village” and “ghosts,” but the crime and the legend of Inunaki Village are entirely separate things. Out of respect for the victim and his family, NazoMap does not treat the crime as material for scary stories and records only the facts, as background to how the rumors spread.
The film Howling Village and the “Village of Fear” series
On February 7, 2020, the horror film Inunaki Mura (released in English as Howling Village; directed by Takashi Shimizu, starring Ayaka Miyoshi, distributed by Toei), based on this urban legend, was released. It became a hit, earning more than 1.4 billion yen at the box office, and was the first in the “Village of Fear” series, followed by Suicide Forest Village (2021) and Ox-Head Village (2022). Rather than portraying the online story of a “closed village” as it is, the film reworks it into a ghost story set in the old Inunaki Tunnel.
The year before, in 2019, an indie game titled Inunaki Tunnel, based on the old tunnel, was also released, and Inunaki became widely known as a subject of films and games.
Problems caused by the rumors: prejudice and nuisance
The rumors of Inunaki Village include many details such as “a clan cut off from the outside world” and “a village where the law does not apply.” Such stories are not only baseless; it has been pointed out that they can breed prejudice against real communities and the people who have lived there, and can evoke discrimination against particular settlements. When telling the story, it is worth remembering that it is fiction.
Some people also head to the old road at night to check out the rumors, but the old Inunaki Tunnel and old road are off limits. Climbing over the fences may violate laws such as those against trespassing, and mountain roads without streetlights are dangerous. Noise and litter are also a serious nuisance to local residents. Enjoy Inunaki Village only as an urban legend.
Other internet ghost stories tied to real places include Kisaragi Station, about a station that does not exist, and Kotoribako, set in Shimane Prefecture.
