Sunekosuri

No creation or mythic origin story is recorded in the cited sources; the earliest recorded mention in the provided material is Satou Seimei's 1935 compendium (Current Dictionary of Yōkai Nationwide), which documents the creature's behavior and circumstances of appearance in regional accounts.

The 1935 compendium account emphasizes the creature's behavior rather than a detailed visual form, describing it as rubbing against the crotch (space between the legs) of people walking on roads at night. A local Okayama report (Ibara, near the Iryō-dō shrine) describes it taking the shape of a dog. Later popular-media portrayals (noted in modern sources) depict cat-like or small chubby, tabby-cat forms or lumps of hair with eyes—visualizations attributed to manga and film adaptations rather than to the older folkloric records.

According to the 1935 folkloric account, the sunekosuri appears on rainy nights and rubs against the crotch (space between the legs) of people walking on roads at night; victims experience a little difficulty walking but suffer no other harm. A closely related regional spirit, sunekkorogashi (Yoshii, Shitsuki District), is reported to slip into darkness at night and pull on people's legs, making them fall over (children sometimes hurt their noses). Modern fictional works have expanded abilities (for example, a GeGeGe no Kitarō adaptation depicts feeding on lifeforce), but such powers are part of those adaptations and are not recorded in the folkloric sources cited.