Miyoshi Mononoke Museum

What is there

The museum opened in 2019 in Miyoshi, a river town in the hills of northern Hiroshima, around a collection of some five thousand items gathered by one scholar over a lifetime: picture scrolls, woodblock prints, toys, netsuke, kimono and board games with yokai on them. The galleries change three times a year, so the scrolls on show are never the same twice, and an interactive room lets children raise yokai of their own on the walls. A walking route through the town follows the hauntings of 1749 from the hill where the boy’s dare began.

Why here

In the summer of 1749 the samurai boy Inō Heitarō climbed the hill behind the town on a dare, and for thirty nights afterwards his house was visited by one apparition after another, ending with a giant face of an old woman that filled his doorway. On the thirtieth night the chief of the spirits introduced himself, praised the boy’s nerve, and left him a wooden mallet. The scrolls that record it are the reason the museum is here, and the giant face is told in the article.

Yokai you will meet

• Ōkubi 大首 — The giant old woman's face that filled Inō Heitarō's doorway in 1749; the scrolls of the hauntings are in the collection.

Getting there

Miyoshi Station (JR Geibi Line). Bus about ten minutes, or about 30 minutes on foot.

• Open in Google Maps (external link)
• Open in OpenStreetMap (external link)
• Official site (external link)