What is the miage-nyudo?
The miage-nyudo is a yokai told of on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture. When you climb a small slope at night, it appears before you in the form of a little monk. As you look up at it, it grows taller and taller, and you end up falling over backward while looking up, it is said. Yanagita Kunio‘s Yokai Dangi also introduces it as a relative of the mikoshi-nyudo.
“Miage-nyudo, I saw over you”
If you meet a miage-nyudo, it is said to vanish if you chant “Miage-nyudo, I saw over you” (miage-nyudo, mikoshita) and lie face down. The idea is that declaring you have seen through it takes away the yokai’s power. In some areas, stories tell of defeating it by striking it with a staff along with the chant, or hitting its thinning legs with a stick.
The miage-nyudo across Sado
On Sado Island, miage-nyudo stories are told in Hamochi, Utami in Ryotsu, Akadomari and elsewhere. Each place has a slightly different story: it robs travelers of food and money, it is a great rock in a place dark even by day that took shape, or it crushes passersby.
Link with the mikoshi-nyudo
Yokai that grow taller as you look up are told of all over Japan, called “mikoshi-nyudo,” “taka-nyudo,” “nobiagari” and so on. Edo-period pictures often depict them as giant monks with long necks, sometimes treated as the commander of all yokai. The giant shadow is said to be a transformed tanuki or fox, or an illusion on a dark slope. Stories of giant monks that trick people are also linked with the legends of the shapeshifting tanuki.
