Inunaki Pass (犬鳴峠)

A mountain pass lying on the border between Miyawaka City and Kasuya District's Hisayama Town in Fukuoka Prefecture. Once known as "Kubara-goe," the precise circumstances by which the two characters meaning "dog's cry" came to be carved into this place's name remain, to this day, sunken in fog.

The ancient manuscript Inunakiyama Kojitsu records that a wolf, standing motionless before a waterfall, wept without ceasing in lament of a wall it could not cross. Another account holds that the mountains were so deep and treacherous that even dogs turned back howling. Whatever the truth, the memory of a "crying voice" that fills this land has been passed down as the origin of its name.

The name Inunakiyama first appears in Edo-period gazetteers during the Genroku era. In the memorial registers of a settlement cleared by foot soldiers who had relocated there under domain orders, the place name was quietly inscribed. The stone water basin they dedicated to the shrine at Hisayama still stands beside the oratory today, draped in moss.

Until the New Inunaki Tunnel opened in 1975, the pass road was a treacherous stretch of hairpin curves and a cramped, narrow tunnel. Rumors of suspicious lights swaying along the old road each night never ceased, and the saying that "once you enter, you cannot return" passed from mouth to mouth. Even now, access to the area around the old tunnel remains restricted, and that very silence continues to agitate the human imagination.

On nights when a dog's cry can be heard, it is best not to approach the pass — so the village elders still say. Whether the sound belongs to a beast or to something else entirely, the accounts of those who went to find out are rarely heard from again.