It turns out that all of these noppera-bō are really just mujina in disguise. Stopping to relax, the man tells the vendor of his encounter, only to recoil in horror as the soba vendor strokes his face, becoming a noppera-bō himself. Frightened, the man proceeds down the road for some time, until he comes across a soba vendor. After he attempts to console the young woman and offer assistance, she turns to face him, startling him with the blank countenance of a faceless ghost. The story tells of a man who, travelling along the Akasaka road to Edo, comes across a young woman in a remote location near Kunizaka hill, crying and forlorn. The most famous story of a noppera-bō is "Mujina" in Lafcadio Hearn's book Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Rushing home to hide, he is confronted by what seems to be his wife, who chastises him for his wickedness before wiping off her facial features as well. He ignores her and, to his horror, she wipes off her face. Once at the spot, he is met by a beautiful young woman who pleads with him not to fish in the pond. On his way to the pond, he is warned by another fisherman not to go there, but he again ignores the warning. Despite being warned by his wife about the pond being sacred and near a graveyard, the fisherman went anyway. This tale recounts a lazy fisherman who decided to fish in the imperial koi ponds near the Heian-kyō palace. They are also said to appear in folktales in the Osaka Prefecture and Kotonami, Nakatado District, Kagawa Prefecture among other places. However, sometimes their real identity is not known, and in the Kanbun 3 (1663) kaidan collection Sorori Monogatari, it was written that in the Oike-cho of the capital (now Nakagyō-ku, Kyoto), there appeared a noppera-bō with a height of about 7 shaku (about 2.1 meters), but nothing was written about what its true identity was. In Showa 4 (1767), in the kaidan collection Shinsetsu Hyakumonogatari, there were stories that told of how in Nijugawara in Kyoto (near the Nijo-ohashi bridge in the Nakagyō-ku, Kyoto), a monster called noppera-bō appeared and those that were attacked by it would have several thick hairs attached to their clothing, indicating that it was the disguise of some kind of animal. Often, a noppera-bō would not actually exist, but was the disguise of a mujina, a fox kitsune, or a tanuki. They appear at first as ordinary human beings, sometimes impersonating someone familiar to the victim, before causing their features to disappear, leaving a blank, smooth sheet of skin where their face should be. Noppera-bō are known primarily for frightening humans, but are usually otherwise harmless. Lafcadio Hearn used the animals' name as the title of his story about faceless monsters, probably resulting in the misused terminology. Such creatures were thought to sometimes transform themselves into noppera-bō in order to frighten humans. Although the mujina can assume the form of the other, noppera-bō are usually disguised as humans. They are sometimes mistakenly referred to as a mujina, an old Japanese word for a badger or raccoon dog. ![]() ![]() The noppera-bō ( のっぺらぼう), or faceless ghost, is a Japanese yōkai that looks like a human but has no face. ![]() JSTOR ( November 2011) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)ĭepiction of a noppera-bō (by Asai Ryōi in his Otogi Boko, early Edo period).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.
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