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 drifting through the forest canopy.

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 and silent. Gradually, a single portrait formed in folklore: a winged, rat-like, sometimes weasel-faced creature that attacks to smother its prey and drink its blood.

Texts say the creature can strike larger animals and 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 is then drained of blood or life-force. One legend tells of such an animal assaulting cats until it was caught and identified.

Despite its terrifying reputation, several accounts insist a Nobusuma can be killed, as it remains a beast of the natural world touched by the supernatural. One story recounts a guard-samurai who speared an attacker in the dark; the "monster" that hit the ground proved to be an unnaturally large and aggressive flying squirrel.