Nando-baba

Open the wrong door in an old house in western Japan and the dark inside does not always stay empty. Somewhere behind the stacked bedding and the rice sacks, low to the floor, a small shape shifts and lets out a soft drawn-out cry, a thin “Hoo” like wind finding a gap in the boards. That is the nando-baba, the old woman of the storeroom, and the sensible thing to do is to shut the door again and leave her to her dark.

She keeps to the nando, the windowless back room where a household stored its quilts and grain, its tools and its few valuables through the turning year. These were the stillest rooms in the house, opened rarely and closed most of the day, and that suited her exactly. She likes dust and shadow, and the colder and closer the air the better. In the old districts around Okayama people spoke of her as a bald little crone who might be found sitting among the folded futon if you looked hard enough, hunched and silent, as though she had always been a part of the room’s furniture. Some swore she was no spirit at all but a tanuki that had slipped inside and taken an old woman’s shape, which says something about how dim the sightings were and how much anyone wanted a tidy answer.

What people agreed on was slight and unlovely. She is short, her head bald or nearly so, and her clothes are worn to rags. There is nothing grand about her and nothing beautiful, no horns or claws or fire, only an old woman the size of a child crouched where no old woman should be. She is not much of a monster.

For most of the year she costs the household nothing. She takes what little she can find among the stores and asks for no offerings, and she does no one any real harm. Her whole nature is to avoid being seen. She is shy and easily startled, and given the choice she will always hide rather than face the person who opens her door.

The trouble comes at the threshold, and only there. Pull the storeroom door wide without warning and the timid thing inside loses its nerve completely. She bursts from the dark shrieking and bolts through the house, so that for a few frantic moments a family finds itself chased room to room by a screaming bald grandmother nobody remembers inviting. The cure the old people gave was blunt and practical. Strike her over the head with the garden broom. A solid rap leaves her dazed and reeling, and she scrambles away to vanish under the veranda, down through a gap in the boards into the crawlspace where the light never reaches.

She was not always a nuisance to be swept out from under the floor. In the older religion of the house, every part of the home kept its own small resident god: one at the hearth, one at the well, one at the gate, one even at the privy. The nando was among the most sacred of these spaces, the room that held the family’s bedding and stored wealth and, with them, something of the household’s fortune and continuity. In places that room had its own guardian, a spirit set to watch over the family’s stores. The nando-baba is what became of that guardian. As the household gods were forgotten and their small rites let go, the storeroom deity did not quite die. She dwindled instead, sinking from a protector the family honored into a startled crone they drove off with a broom, until the blessing on the grain had become a bald woman hiding in the dark.

The details shift from valley to valley. The “Hoo”-crying, broom-beaten version belongs to Okayama, to the old farming districts of Akasaka and Kamitsumichi, but storeroom hags of the same kind were told of across western Japan, in Nara and Hyogo and as far south as Miyazaki. In a few places people said the nando-baba stole newborn infants from their bedding, which sounds far more sinister than the rest of her reputation and almost certainly is not hers at all. That crime belongs to the yama-uba, the mountain hag who genuinely does prey on travelers and children, and whose fearsome name seems to have rubbed off on the harmless old woman in the closet.

Whatever power she keeps is the narrow, stubborn power of her own threshold. Inside the storeroom she is at home and all but invisible, part of the walls and the folded quilts, needing nothing and bothering no one. Step her out of it and she has almost nothing left. She cannot fight, cannot curse, cannot hold the room against anyone who truly means to clean it; she can only run and cry out and disappear beneath the floor. The nando itself is the last of her strength, and the nando is going. The dark windowless storeroom has all but vanished from the houses people build now, and when the room goes, the small bald woman who lived in its corner has nowhere left to sit.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Nando-baba?

The Nando-baba is a yokai from the folklore of western Japan, an old-woman spirit that lives inside the nando, or storeroom, of a traditional house. Its name means “storeroom hag.” It is generally harmless and is best known for hiding among stored bedding and fleeing when its dark room is opened.

Where does the Nando-baba live?

The Nando-baba lives in the storeroom, shed, or closet of an old house, preferring dark, dusty spaces that stay shut for most of the day. The tradition is strongest in Okayama Prefecture, in the former farming districts of Akasaka and Kamitsumichi, with similar storeroom hags reported elsewhere in western Japan such as Nara, Hyogo, and Miyazaki.

Is the Nando-baba dangerous?

The Nando-baba is not dangerous and does people no real harm. She is shy and easily frightened, and usually just hides or scurries away when disturbed, though if surprised she may leap out screaming and chase people through the house. Stories that she steals newborn infants are most likely confusion with the far more dangerous yama-uba, the mountain hag.

How do you get rid of a Nando-baba?

According to Okayama tradition, you drive off a Nando-baba by striking her on the head with a garden broom, which leaves her dazed. She then flees the room and hides under the veranda or beneath the floorboards. She has no power to hold the storeroom against anyone determined to clean it.

Was the Nando-baba once a god?

The Nando-baba is thought to have originally been a household guardian spirit, a tutelary deity of the storeroom in an older Japanese domestic religion where each part of the home had its own protective god. As those beliefs faded and their rituals were abandoned, the storeroom deity declined into a yokai, remembered as a nuisance rather than honored as a protector.

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