You are walking home on a dark road at night. Behind you, you hear footsteps. Nobody is there. In Uda District, in Nara Prefecture, people had a name for this. They called it Betobeto-san. They also had a polite way to make it leave.
What does it look like?
In the tradition, Betobeto-san is only a sound of footsteps. It has no visible form. There is nothing to see, only something to hear.
The name is written in hiragana, not kanji. The -san on the end is the everyday honorific used for people, as in "Tanaka-san."
Where people met it
The folklorist Yanagita Kunio listed Betobeto-san in his book Yōkai Dangi (1956). It appears in the book's "Yōkai Meii," a glossary of yokai names. That glossary first ran in the journal Minkan Denshō in 1938–39. Yanagita filed Betobeto-san among the road yokai. He wrote that it follows people who walk on a road at night.
Two regions tell the story. In Uda District, Nara, people meet it on a dark night road. In Shizuoka Prefecture, people meet it when coming down a small hill.
The folklore writer Tada Katsumi adds an important detail. Betobeto-san makes only the sound of footsteps. It does no harm to people.
How to send it on ahead
The remedy is simple. If the footsteps start to feel creepy, step to one side of the road. Then say "Betobeto-san, osaki ni okoshi." That means, roughly, "Betobeto-san, please go on ahead." The yokai then leaves you.
The words change a little by place. In Shizuoka, people say just "Osaki ni okoshi." Another Shizuoka version is "Osaki ni dōzo," which means "After you."
A cousin in the sleet
Betobeto-san has a relative in Fukui Prefecture. In old Sakai District, now Sakai City, people told of Bishagatsuku. It is also unseen. It follows people walking at night in winter sleet. Its sound is a splashing bisha-bisha. The folklorist Mogi Tokurō treats it as the same kind of yokai as Betobeto-san.
Where it comes from
Not every footstep yokai is gentle. The modern Teke-teke is also a footstep yokai. But Teke-teke is told only as something to fear. Betobeto-san is different. It follows you, you speak to it, and it goes.
One reading is that the story gives walkers a script. A dark road is easier with a line to say. The words read less like a spell than like manners. They may be what you would say to a stranger behind you. That reading is an interpretation. The sources only give the words and the result.
Go deeper
Books worth owning if this world pulls you in.
- The Book of Yokai →Michael Dylan FosterThe most readable scholarly introduction to yokai — where they come from, what they mean, and the major creatures.
- Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien →trans. Hiroko Yoda & Matt AltThe complete Edo-period bestiaries that so many of these entries trace back to, in full English translation.
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Betobeto-san today
The manga artist Mizuki Shigeru had a personal tie to Betobeto-san. He said he once met something he thought was this yokai. As a boy, he was too scared to look back. Nonnon-bā (Kageyama Fusa), a woman from his childhood, taught him what to do if he met it.
Mizuki also gave it a body. The familiar picture is a round head with legs growing from it, and a large, smiling open mouth. That look is Mizuki's own invention, built from the tradition. It is not folklore. The tradition still has only footsteps.
He drew it in Gegege no Kitarō, Nonnonbā to Ore and Komikku Shōwa-shi. It is in his yokai picture books too. It also appears in the sixth Kitarō anime and the first live-action Kitarō film. The TV drama Gegege no Nyōbō includes it as well.
In Sakaiminato, Tottori, a bronze statue stands on Mizuki Shigeru Road. Visitors often put coins in its mouth. It came 9th in the town's first yokai popularity vote, in 2007. In the second vote, in 2009, it came 7th. On the JR West Sakai Line, Yonago Airport Station has a nickname. It is "Betobeto-san" station.
The name has spread further still. In the 2004 novel and anime Petopeto-san, a girl named Petoko is a descendant of Betobeto-san.
