Unmother
The noppera-bō (のっぺらぼう/野箆坊; < nopperi "flat-faced"), in Japanese folklore, is a faceless yōkai that looks like a human but has no face.
An 18th century version exists which calls the yōkai a nupperibō. Old versions may not name the yōkai explicitly as a nopperabō, and this also applies to Lafcadio Hearn's short story "Mujina" (1904), set in Edo (Tokyo). Here, a man witnesses a blank-faced noppera-bō woman, flees, and tries to tell his experience to a soba noodle shop proprietor, who also turns around with a blank face and asks if that was what the man saw.
This motif of double-scare has been dubbed saido no kai (再度の怪) (§ Recurrent spookings). Sometimes the blank-faced human is told or hinted to be a trick played by a shapeshifter beast such as the mujina, fox kitsune, or tanuki. Additional regional folktale examples have been printed also.
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