Ittan-momen


Ittan-momen are a yōkai told about in Kōyama, Kimotsuki District, Kagosima Prefecture (now Kimotsuki. They are also called "ittan monme" or "ittan monmen."

Summary

According to the Ōsumi Kimotsukigun Hōgen Shū jointly authored by the locally born educator, Nomura Denshi and the folkloricist Kunio Yanagita, at evening time, a cloth-like object about 1 tan in area would flutter around attack people.
They are said to wrap around people's necks and cover people's faces and suffocate people to death, and in other tales it is said that wrapped cloths would spin around and around and quickly come flying, wrap around people's bodies, and take them away to the skies.
There is a story where one man hurrying to his home at night when a white cloth came and wrapped around his neck, and when he cut it with his wakizashi, the cloth disappeared, and remaining on his hands was some blood.
In regions where they are said to appear and disappear, there seemed to be a custom where children were warned that if they play too late, that "ittan momen would come."
Also, it is said that in Kimotsuki, there is are shrines where ittan momen are said to frequently appear, and it was believed that when children pass in front of the shrine, an ittan momen flying above in the skies would attack the very last child in line, so children would go run ahead and cut through.
In the classical yōkai emaki, the, there is a yōkai shaped like a cloth with arms and legs, and the folklorist hypothesizes that this is the origin of ittan momen.

Recent sightings

According to a report from the yōkai researcher, in recent years there have been many eyewitness reports of flying cloth-shaped objects thought to be ittan momen.
In Kagoshima Prefecture where this legend is told, white cloth-like objects flying in low altitude have been witnessed. In Fukuoka Prefecture, also in Kyushu, there have been reports of extremely speedy ittan momen flying alongside shinkansen trains witnessed by shinkansen passengers.
Outside Kyushu, there have been witness reports in Higashi-Kōenji Station and Ogikubo, Tokyo. In Higashi-Kōenji, a woman walking her dog witnessed a cloth flying in the skies and followed it for a while.
In Shizuoka Prefecture, elementary school kids were said to have seen a transparent sheet-like object flutter around, and the entire object was like a rectangle, but it became thin on one end, like a tail.
In 2004, in Hyōgo Prefecture, a UFO filming society captured footage of an unidentified cloth-shaped object flying in the skies above Mount Rokkō and it is said to be extremely large, at 30 meters.
While filming Natsuhiko Kyogoku "Kai", the actor Shirō Sano witnessed an ittan momen flying above, and it is said to have a long white shape.
Also, in the eastern Japan earthquake, there have been many reports of something closely resembling an ittan momen, and there have been many videos confirmed to show a white cloth-like object flying in the air.

True identity

Ittan momen are thought to appear in the evening, but the general view is that this is because in the past, parents needed to do farmwork for the entire day including at this time and therefore could not keep an eye on their children, so the tales of ittan momen were told to children to warn them of the dangers of playing too late. Also, in the lands where the legend is told, there is a custom of raising a cotton flag during burials for the purpose of mourning, so it is inferred that some of these would be blown by the wind and fly in the air and thus be connected to the legends of the momen yōkai.
In the Japanese television series Tokoro-san no Me ga Ten! there was an experiment performed in which a piece of cloth about 50 centimeters long was set up and moved in the darkness, and the average length reported by the people who saw it was 2.19 meters, with the longest being 6 meters. The program suggested that when a white or bright objects move in the darkness, a positive afterimage optical illusion would leave a trail due to movement, causing soaring things in the forests at night such as musasabi to be seen as longer than they actually are, and thus mistaken as ittan momen.

In fiction

There are no depictions of ittan momen in classical yōkai emaki, so this yōkai was once relatively unknown, but ever since their appearance in Mizuki Shigeru's comic GeGeGe no Kitarō, it became more widely known. This comic depicted them to talk in a Kyushu dialect, have good-natured personalities, and have a unique look while flying, which raised their fame and popularity despite their original legend of attacking people. In Shigeru's birthplace, Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture, they ranked number 1 in the "First Yōkai Popularity Poll" held by the tourism association.
Also, in Shigeru's yōkai depictions, like the other characters of Kitarō, they are depicted as a cloth with two eyes and two arms, so now they are commonly perceived to be pieces of cloth with two eyes in yōkai depictions, but Mizuki's yōkai depictions are original inventions and the ones in actual legend and in the previous witness reports have no eyes or arms and are instead simply flying objects that resembled cloth.
In Kamen Rider Hibiki, they appeared as enemy characters and they were based on the original legend with some extra original twists on their appearance and personality.
In 2007, the local historian of Kagoshima Prefecture, Takenoi Satoshi, started creating kamishibai of ittan momen so that such legends that are gradually being forgotten can be remembered by the children.
In the 2020 anime adaptation of the In/Spectre

Similar yōkai

The following are yōkai considered to be similar to ittan momen. The musasabi would through the air along forest streets at night and cling to people's faces in surprise, so it is theorized that they are thought to a yōkai like this.
Fusuma
Futon kabuse

In popular culture