Nuppeppō

Lore & Background

In the emaki, the nuppeppō has nothing more than a name and picture, with almost no explanatory text. However, from its name and the passage 'there is a monster (bakemono) called nuppeppō. It has neither eye nor ear' from the sharebon Shingo Zade Hōdai Mōgyū (1781), it is seen as a type of noppera-bō. In an old picture book manuscript held at the Shisui Library, Inui Yūhei portrayed a yōkai called 'nubbehhō,' introduced as 'the disguised form of an old toad, similar to the fox or tanuki,' and described as 'a monster that's a very wrinkly sweet potato with four short limbs.' The same sharebon also writes, 'it sucks the fat of the dead and eats to the fullest with a needle. In the past, they'd come disguised as a doctor, but now they just come as is.'

Reader's Guide

The nuppeppō is significant as a yōkai whose depiction and lore have evolved from sparse Edo Period illustrations to more detailed modern interpretations, though much remains uncertain. Yōkai researcher Katsumi Tada notes that while the modern nopperabō is known as a faceless yōkai, older forms like the nuppeppō had no distinction between face and body. Tada connects the creature to the concept of 'whitening' (白化), meaning feigning ignorance or applying white face powder, suggesting the nuppeppō would impersonate a human, speak frankly, then reveal its true form. In Shōwa and Heisei literature, it was written to appear near abandoned temples, but this likely originates from folklore scholar Morihiko Fujisawa's statement in Yōkai Gadan Zenshū Nihonhen Jō, which may be an original creation imagined from the background in the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō. Some literature claims it is born from dead meat and leaves a stench of rotten meat, but the original primary source for this is unknown. A similar tale from the Bunka period writing Isshōwa describes a blob of meat appearing at Sunpu Castle in 1609, which Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered driven into the mountains; a later commentator identified it as the 'Feng' from Chinese texts, whose meat is a panacea.

Did You Know?

• The nuppeppō appears in Edo Period yōkai emaki such as the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō and the Hyakkai Zukan.
• Its name is a corruption of the derogatory slang nupperi, used to describe a woman who applies too much make-up.

Visual Identity & Physical Form

The nuppeppō is rendered across Edo-period yōkai scrolls as a single undifferentiated mass of flesh, its surface creased and wrinkled so thoroughly that no distinct facial features can be isolated from the surrounding body. Early sources describe it as possessing neither eyes nor ears, while a later manuscript illustration adds four short limbs and a wrinkly, sweet-potato-like body. In more detailed depictions, faint suggestions of fingers, toes, and rudimentary appendages emerge from the folds of skin, yet the creature remains fundamentally amorphous. Some later literature describes it as assembled from the flesh of dead humans, evoking a Frankenstein-like construction. Its most striking sensory trait is an overwhelming stench comparable to rotting meat, a detail that appears in secondary accounts even though no primary source for this specific claim has been identified. The overall effect is one of passive, inert horror—a lump of organic matter that suggests a face without committing to one.

The 'Whitening' Doctrine & Behavioral Myth

The nuppeppō's behavioral mythology is inseparable from the Japanese concept of 'whitening' (白化), a polysemous term carrying meanings that range from feigning ignorance and speaking in deceptively frank tones to applying white facial powder or simply denoting a white monster. Yōkai researcher Katsumi Tada argues that the creature embodies all these layers simultaneously: it first approaches a pedestrian while impersonating a human (the 'pretending not to know' aspect), engages in friendly conversation (the 'speaking frankly' layer), and then, as the victim's guard drops, reveals its true wrinkled, faceless form (the 'unconcealed white monster' meaning). This makes the nuppeppō a narrative engine for deception and exposure. In practice, however, the creature is described as passive and nearly harmless. It wanders aimlessly through deserted streets, graveyards, and abandoned temple grounds, typically at night around year-end. Its lumbering gait and the overpowering stench of decay it leaves in its wake are its primary threats to human comfort, not any active aggression.

Artistic & Literary Legacy

The nuppeppō has a long visual pedigree stretching from the late seventeenth-century Bakemono no e through Sawaki Suushi's 1737 Hyakkai Zukan to Toriyama Sekien's landmark 1776 Gazu Hyakki Yagyō. In each of these emaki, the creature is presented with little more than a name and an illustration, accompanied by minimal or no explanatory text. A separate manuscript held at the Shisui Library, attributed to Inui Yūhei of unknown date, offers a variant spelling and describes the entity as a disguised old toad, comparable to fox or tanuki shapeshifters. Beyond the visual tradition, the 1609 Sunpu Castle episode—recorded in the Bunka-period text Isshōwa—tells of a child-shaped meat blob with fingerless hands that Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered driven into the mountains. A later 18th-century scroll by the scribe Makibokusen retells this event, adding that the creature corresponds to the 'Feng' of classical Chinese texts and that its flesh, if consumed, grants restorative power. These layered retellings cemented the nuppeppō as a fixture of Japanese yōkai lore.

Etymology & the Noppera-bō Connection

The name 'nuppeppō' is a phonetic corruption of nupperi, a derogatory colloquialism for a woman who applies excessive makeup, a reference that maps directly onto the creature's saggy, over-folded appearance. This etymological root also ties the nuppeppō to the noppera-bō, another faceless yōkai. Katsumi Tada observes that in earlier periods the noppera-bō was not the familiar eyeless, noseless face but rather a form indistinguishable from the nuppeppō's undifferentiated flesh-blob. The 1781 sharebon Shingo Zade Hōdai Mōgyū explicitly links the two, describing the nuppeppō as a bakemono with neither eyes nor ears, and adds that it once disguised itself as a doctor before abandoning the pretense entirely. Some Shōwa- and Heisei-era folklore texts locate the creature near abandoned temples, but this detail traces back to a single passage in Morihiko Fujisawa's Yōkai Gadan Zenshū Nihonhen Jō, where the temple backdrop of the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō illustration was apparently misread as a narrative claim. The nuppeppō thus exists in a liminal space between documented folklore and later scholarly invention.