NOPPERA-BO

Lore

At a glance, the Noppera-bo appears to be an ordinary human, until the victim notices a crucial detail: its face is completely smooth—no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Although these yokai do not inflict physical harm, they terrify adventurers with their sudden, ghostly “vanishing face.”

One famous story from Kyoto involves a merchant returning home late at night over the Kiyomizu Bridge. There he saw a young woman crying. When she turned around, the dim moonlight revealed her face was utterly blank. Panicking, the merchant fled to a nearby teahouse. As he franticly told the teahouse owner what he had witnessed, the proprietor asked if the woman’s face had looked “something like this?”—at which point his own features disappeared, becoming a smooth void.

The merchant lost consciousness, and when he came to, the bridge lay silent and deserted. No one could confirm anything had happened at all.