The children’s voices in the Tottori futon

Overview

Hearn presents the Tottori futon story through an unnamed woman serving at an inn in Hamamura and his interpreter. A merchant sleeping at a newly opened inn hears two children asking whether the other is cold. He finds no children in the room, and the voices continue beside his pillow. Realizing that the covering itself speaks, he leaves. The landlord dismisses him as drunk, but a second guest, who has taken no sake, reports the same disturbance. When the landlord investigates, he too hears the voices from one particular covering, while the other bedding remains silent.

Tracing the quilt through several second-hand dealers, the innkeeper learns that it belonged to a poor family. The father died after an illness, followed by the already sick mother. Their sons, aged eight and six, sold the household possessions and most of their clothing to obtain food, until only a single futon remained. During bitter winter weather they sheltered beneath it and asked whether the other was cold. Their landlord demanded unpaid rent, evicted them into the snow and kept the quilt. Unable to reach a nearby temple, they huddled behind the house and froze to death. They were later buried in the cemetery of the temple of Kwannon-of-the-Thousand-Arms.

The innkeeper gives the haunted futon to the temple and has scripture recited for the children’s souls. Afterwards it no longer speaks. The haunting expresses the brothers’ continuing care for one another, rather than an attack on the guests or revenge against the landlord. No visible child-ghost, animal body or moving cloth-limbs are described. It is therefore kept separate from Sekien’s named Boroboroton, an illustrated animated futon: sharing the material object does not establish that the two witnesses describe the same being.

The surrounding chapter identifies the woman as a widow whose husband and brother drowned years earlier, but her own loss is not the family history of the two boys in the embedded tale. Hearn explicitly relates that tale through interpretation and interrupts it to explain bedding customs. This entry records his1894 English literary witness, without supplying a lost personal name for the narrator or treating the haunting as a verified event.

Origins & earliest records

An unnamed Hamamura woman’s Tottori story, mediated by Hearn’s interpreter and published in1894.

Records & interpretation

Complete chapter and allseven endnotes read; embedded narrative traced through final cessation after temple prayers.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Second Series — By the Japanese Sea

   Lafcadio Hearn · 1894

   Hosted chapterVI, complete sections1–12 and all7notes; original two-volume chapterXXI. Sea ghosts§§1–6; Tottori futon§§8–9.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

Primary records and illustrations

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Historical literary travel account and mediated oral narrativesHearn, complete By the Japanese SeaResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.