NOBUSUMA

Lore

Nobusuma (野衾) is a classic Japanese yokai whose name combines the characters for “wild” and “bed-quilt.” The word originally referred to Japan’s flying squirrels, whose skin membranes let them glide, creating the image of a living blanket. In old records the creature is drawn as a bat-like monster that spreads itself over a person’s face.

The zoological basis for those stories is thought to be the giant flying squirrel (musasabi) and the tiny dwarf flying squirrel (momonga). Both are nocturnal, silent, and capable of gliding suddenly overhead. With time, other night animals slipped into the picture—bats, martens, even tanuki. Gradually a single portrait formed: a winged, rat-like, sometimes weasel-faced creature that attacks to smother its prey and drink its blood. One legend tells of such an animal assaulting cats until it was caught; eyewitnesses recognized it as a nobusuma.

Texts say the creature can strike larger animals, even people. It dives out of the dark and slaps its spread membrane across the eyes and mouth, choking and disorienting at once. The paralyzed victim, so the tale goes, is drained of blood or life-force. Even so, several accounts insist a nobusuma can be killed: it is still a beast, albeit one touched by the supernatural. One story backs this up—when a guard-samurai speared the attacker, the “monster” that hit the ground proved to be an oversized flying squirrel.