Roads & Crossroads

About This Habitat

Yokai that haunt roads, paths, mountain passes, and crossroads. In old Japan, travel was dangerous, and the spaces between settlements were considered wild and spiritually charged. The mikoshi-nyūdō grows taller the more you look up at it, the ittan-momen swoops down from above, and various other beings waylay travelers on lonely roads. Crossroads (tsuji) were especially feared as liminal spaces where worlds intersect.