Иттан момэн: Легенды о летающих тканях из Японии

Japanese yōkai

are a yōkai told about in Kōyama, Kimotsuki District, Kagoshima Prefecture (now Kimotsuki). They are also called ittan monme or ittan monmen.

According to the (大隅肝属郡方言集), jointly authored by the locally born educator Nomura Denshi and the folkloricist Kunio Yanagita, at evening time, a cloth like object about 1 [[tanmono in area (about in length and in width) would flutter around attacking people. 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 (short sword), the cloth disappeared, and remaining on his hands was some blood. In the classical yōkai emaki, the 百鬼夜行絵巻, there is a yōkai shaped like a cloth with arms and legs. The folklorist 小松和彦 hypothesizes that this is the origin of ittan momen.

According to a report from the yōkai researcher 山口敏太郎, 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. 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.

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.