野衾顔を覆う山野の飛膜獣・野衾

In this form, the Nobusuma should be read as a small beast that flutters down from the treetops to press a cloth-like gliding membrane against a traveler's face. The core of its terror lies not in fangs or claws, but in instantly snatching away the ability to "see and breathe." On a mountain path, something drops from above, a damp membrane sticks to the face, the eyes and nose are sealed, and all sense of direction is lost. This sequence of physical sensations elevates the Nobusuma from a mere flying squirrel to a yokai.

Sekien's illustration^[1] does not make the Nobusuma overly gigantic. In fact, it is terrifying precisely because it is small, agile, and has an indistinct outline in the dark. It does not attack head-on like a giant snake or an oni, but drops from the shadow of branches, roofs, or cliffs at an angle the traveler does not anticipate. Its form with spread membranes looks like cloth, yet it is not cloth. Therein lies the decisive difference from the pre-existing Fusuma. While the white-cloth Fusuma is an ownerless cloth turned spectral, the Nobusuma is a yokai of misrecognition born the instant an animal's body is mistaken for cloth.

If we consider the Nobusuma's ability as "covering the face," its closeness to the Nodepo^[2] becomes clear. The Nodepo is said to spit something bat-like from its mouth to cover a person's face and block their eyes. The Nobusuma is described either as being akin to that spat-out object or as the transformation of an old bat. Either way, the function of the attack is the same: first, steal the vision; next, disrupt the breathing; finally, suck the blood or life force. This sequence can be read as a reconstruction of the terror of suddenly losing one's bearings on a mountain road into the behavioral pattern of a yokai.

Furthermore, the Nobusuma cannot be simply rationalized away by saying, "If you know the real animal, you won't be scared." Flying squirrels do exist, but it is not guaranteed that someone seeing a shadow gliding overhead at night can correctly identify it. In the mountains, the distinction between bird or beast, cloth or shadow, a branch moved by the wind or a living creature blurs in an instant. The Nobusuma inhabits that time of unidentifiability. The progression where old natural history books record the animal's name, Sekien translates it into a yokai illustration, and bizarre tales add the traits of blood-sucking and face-covering perfectly demonstrates that knowledge does not erase superstition—knowledge itself becomes the raw material for anomalies.

What this version emphasizes is the liminality of the Nobusuma, ending up neither simply as a "small mountain animal" nor a "cloth tsukumogami." Its body is a beast, its appearance is cloth, and its behavior is a yokai. From the traveler's perspective, there is almost no time to judge what it is. The instant the face is covered, terror arrives before the name. Therefore, it is best read not as a protagonist yokai with a grand narrative even in encyclopedias, but as an anomaly condensed into a single moment on a night road. The more it maintains its small size, the more the unsettling closeness of the attack stands out. The crucial element is that distance—feeling as if you could brush it away with a hand, yet you cannot—more than any massive monster.

Geographically, the Nobusuma is difficult to pin down to a single prefecture. While the cloth-type Fusuma can be established as local folklore in Sado or Tosa, the Nobusuma strongly retains the character of Edo's commercial publishing having reassembled a nocturnal mountain beast into a yokai. Therefore, this version takes Edo publishing culture as its starting point, while treating its habitat as mountain forests, ravines, and forest edges near human settlements. What lurks there is not a grand yokai showing its full form, but a tiny darkness already plastered to your face the moment you think you saw it. In YOKAI.JP, positioning this Nobusuma as a "Gliding Beast of the Wild" is the most natural fit.