Keneō.

Keneō (懸衣翁) is the elderly male counterpart to Datsue-ba, stationed beside the Sanzu River and the tree where the dead person's garments are hung. He is less famous than the old ogress who strips the clothes, yet no less important to the underworld process. As an aged infernal figure, he joins riverbank cruelty to bureaucratic measurement, turning cloth and water into evidence.

Keneō receives the garments Datsue-ba removes from the dead and hangs them on the riverside tree. The pull of the cloth on the branch reveals the burden of sin, especially when the clothing is soaked by a difficult crossing through deep or swift water. In some harsher accounts, if a soul has no clothes, skin must serve instead. Keneō therefore interacts with the dead as a technician of judgment, converting their crossing into visible moral weight.

Keneō emerges from the specifically Japanese elaboration of Buddhist underworld judgment, especially texts around the Sanzu River and the Ten Kings cycle. He is not merely a random demon beside Datsue-ba, but the necessary second half of the act: she strips, he hangs; she exposes, he measures. Through that pairing, the river crossing becomes a forensic scene as well as a passage of death.