In The Legends of Tono, a collection of folktales from Iwate Prefecture in rural northern Japan, sound is often a link between the everyday world and the spirit realm. In the nineteenth century, the villagers, farmers and hunters who feature in the stories were largely cut off from the rest of Japan by the rugged mountains surrounding the city of Tono. Venturing into the hills to hunt, gather plants or make charcoal, they would hear things that made their blood run cold. 

“Nothing is more frightening than the howling of a wolf,” recounts one such tale. Others mention strange screams or whooshing sounds in the forest, a sign of the long-nosed tengu goblins who were known to carry off women and girls, their disappearances dubbed kamikakushi—being spirited away. The stories were han...