Seven-Fathom Wife

NAH-nah-hee-roh NYOH-boh

📖 Detailed Description

Shichihiro Nyōbō is a giant-woman tale widely told in Izumo, Oki, and Hōki, appearing at boundary places such as mountain paths, riverbanks, and shores. Her form shifts by locale: in Ama on Oki she is a wild-haired mocker who hurls stones, along the Shimane coast a sea-wind woman flashing blackened teeth, in Yasugi a beggar beauty trailing a long robe, and in Hōki a pallid grinder-woman who sharpens while singing grain songs. Common threads are excessive length of body or neck and the way laughter, gestures, or song serve as lures. In banishment tales, sword wounds link to petrification, with odd stones, mounds, or ancient trees named as origins, and some lineages claim heirloom swords or tack from these encounters. The cycle is not pure horror; beauty, begging for alms, and the humble fear tied to the sound of grinding grain mingle together, encoding folk lessons about handling boundary anxieties: do not meet the gaze, do not answer voices, avoid night roads. It is comparable to early modern long-faced demon-maidens, yet Shichihiro Nyōbō is marked by ties to local sacred landscapes of mountains and coasts.