NURIKABE

Lore

Nurikabe is a yokai from coastal regions said to appear suddenly on dark roads in the form of a wall that blocks one’s passage. Once Nurikabe rises before you, attempts to skirt around it—whether to the left or right—prove futile, for it simply shifts to deny you any route forward. Striking it reveals a surface as hard as stone in some accounts, though others describe it as curiously soft.

One folk tale recounts a young traveler who lost his way in the forest and found himself surrounded by a wall with a strangely soft texture. Rather than risk forcing his way past it, he chose to sleep. At dawn, the wall was gone, and he discovered he had stopped mere steps from a precipice. Had he pressed on, he would have fallen to his death.