Who Is The Road Swindler (Gomanohai)?

A goma no hai is a thief who poses as a friendly fellow traveler to get close to people on the road, then steals their money or belongings. In Shank's Mare, the man who greets Yaji and Kita so warmly on the way down from Hakone turns out to be exactly that.

He wins the pair over completely and comes with them as far as the inn in Mishima. That night, during a commotion over a soft-shelled turtle, he steals Yaji's travel money and vanishes. When the theft is discovered in the morning, the whole inn is in an uproar, and the two are left stranded without their funds. It is a scene where the carefree duo get badly burned, and it shows how dangerous travel could be.

One theory says the name "goma no hai," meaning "ash from the goma fire ritual," comes from people who went around selling ordinary ash, falsely claiming it was sacred ash from a ritual performed by the Buddhist saint Kobo Daishi. For travelers in the Edo period, thieves like this were a very real danger.