Yamabito
The term yamabito or sanjin, as understood in Japanese folklore, has come to be applied to a group, some scholars claim, of ancient, marginalized people, dating back to some unknown date during the Jōmon period of the history of Japan.
The term itself has been translated as "mountain people", or as Dickins interprets the word as "woodsman", but there is more to it than that. It is from texts recorded by historian Kunio Yanagita that introduced, through their legends and tales, of the concept of being spirited away into Japanese popular culture.
''Tono Monogatari''
According to Yanagita, the Yamabito were "descendants of a real, separate aboriginal race of people who were long ago forced into the mountains by the Japanese who then populated the plains" during the Jōmon period.Yanagita wrote down these folktales in the book Tono Monogatari, though as author Sadler notes:
Kamikakushi
One of the concepts Yanagita presents in Tono Monogatari is that of, literally, being spirited away, orkamikakushi. As author Sadler relates: