Miage-nyudo, Shidaidaka: The Mikoshi-nyudo Through Its Names and How to Make It Vanish

The most interesting thing about the mikoshi-nyudo may not be how scary it is, but how you get rid of it. This monk, who grows bigger the more you look up, has long been said to vanish with a single phrase, or just a change in where you move your eyes. Following its local names along with these tricks shows how people in the past dealt with big shadows on night roads.

A name that changes from place to place

Stories of a monk who grows taller as you look up are told all over Japan, so it goes by many names.

• Miage-nyudo ("look-up monk"): a name passed down on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture and elsewhere. True to its name, it grows as you look up
• Shidaidaka ("taller and taller"): a name used in the Chugoku region of western Japan, describing exactly what it does
• Takabozu and Nobiagari ("tall monk" and "the one who stretches up"): names that simply describe a tall monk, or something rising higher and higher

The names differ, but the shape of the story is much the same. At night, on a lonely road, someone is standing there. You look up, and it grows. Every name involves "looking up" or "getting taller," probably because the fear of this yokai lies, above all, in the act of looking up.

A yokai undone by one phrase

A common part of the mikoshi-nyudo tale is the phrase that names what it really is. In many places people say that if you call out "Mikoshita!" ("I've seen over you!") or "I've seen through you!", it disappears. On Sado, too, there's a story that chanting "Miage-nyudo, mikoshita!" makes it vanish.

On the other hand, if you're frightened and keep staring up at it, it grows bigger and bigger, until in the end you topple over backward. Don't get swept along at its pace; tell it first that you know exactly what it is. It feels less like a dealing with a monster and more like a test of nerve.

Look down, and it shrinks

Another fun piece of lore is about where you move your eyes. Look from its feet up to its head, and it grows. But some say that if you start from the head and let your eyes travel down to its feet, it shrinks instead.

Look up, and it gets taller; look down, and it gets shorter. The name Shidaidaka seems to capture exactly this. As long as you look up from below, it can keep growing forever. But once you look at it "from above," it returns to an ordinary size. It's as if a lesson about how to hold yourself when facing something frightening had been turned straight into a yokai story.

Big shadows on the night road

In the old days, the only light on a night road was the paper lantern in your hand. Your feet were lit, but what lay ahead and above stayed dark. Looking up at a figure standing in front of you, its head might melt into the darkness, and you couldn't tell where it ended. It's fun to imagine that the mikoshi-nyudo was born from that uneasy feeling on night roads.

Unlike the Daidarabotchi, a giant as big as a mountain from the start, the mikoshi-nyudo grows "while you're watching." Many stories say it's really a tanuki in disguise, so it's fun to read alongside the shape-shifting contests of the bake-danuki. You'll find the mikoshi-nyudo's look and legend on its Yokaipedia page.