Sep 29, 2026 · 40 min · 19 segments
Once, wolves roamed the mountains of Japan—not simply as predators, but as protectors, messengers of the gods, and sometimes gods themselves. For this special archive episode, I’ve combined two…
Wolf history and lore can get confusing, especially since, like I said, they're no longer around anymore.
However, this is going to be a two-parter, because you have the wolf-wolf, the actual animal, and then you have all the folklore and the worship of them.
If you're familiar with Japanese, you'll notice it sounds like Big God, Ōkami.
Although there is, of course, the thought that that's where it came from originally.
These stoic animals are associated with godliness, as well as being messengers for the gods.
A side note, it has been suggested that the wolf was the messenger of the mountain gods, while the fox was the messenger of the rice field gods.
If you look at the Japanese character for wolf, ōkami, it's a single kanji that consists of two parts.
Isn't that sweet? Characters and names change through the ages, and some beliefs as to the original meaning are great spirit, big god, big dog, big bite, or big mouth.
Another is a variation of Ooguchi no Makami, the true god with the big mouth.
But you'll also hear and read about something called the yama-inu, or mountain dog.
Is a yama-inu another name for wolf, or were they literally just wild dogs that lived in the mountains? I think I read for an entire day about the arguments back and forth before I finally stopped.
I will, though, mention that one certain Ono Ranzen, who wrote a book about natural studies in 1803 called Honzo Komoku Keimo, and in it he said that the Ōkami is an edible, grayish-brown animal with a long, ash-colored, white-tipped tail and webbed toes.
But the yamainu, while similar, has speckled yellowish fur, unwebbed toes, and also, it smelled really bad, and you couldn't eat it.
Wolf history and lore can get confusing, especially since, like I said, they're no longer around anymore.
However, this is going to be a two-parter, because you have the wolf-wolf, the actual animal, and then you have all the folklore and the worship of them.
If you're familiar with Japanese, you'll notice it sounds like Big God, Ōkami.
Although there is, of course, the thought that that's where it came from originally.
These stoic animals are associated with godliness, as well as being messengers for the gods.
A side note, it has been suggested that the wolf was the messenger of the mountain gods, while the fox was the messenger of the rice field gods.
If you look at the Japanese character for wolf, ōkami, it's a single kanji that consists of two parts.
Isn't that sweet? Characters and names change through the ages, and some beliefs as to the original meaning are great spirit, big god, big dog, big bite, or big mouth.
Another is a variation of Ooguchi no Makami, the true god with the big mouth.
But you'll also hear and read about something called the yama-inu, or mountain dog.
Is a yama-inu another name for wolf, or were they literally just wild dogs that lived in the mountains? I think I read for an entire day about the arguments back and forth before I finally stopped.
I will, though, mention that one certain Ono Ranzen, who wrote a book about natural studies in 1803 called Honzo Komoku Keimo, and in it he said that the Ōkami is an edible, grayish-brown animal with a long, ash-colored, white-tipped tail and webbed toes.
But the yamainu, while similar, has speckled yellowish fur, unwebbed toes, and also, it smelled really bad, and you couldn't eat it.
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