Nurarihyon arrives by fine palanquin in the early evening, when a household is at its busiest, and settles into the main room while no one stops him. He pours the good tea and smokes with such practiced ease that the owners themselves wait on him as their elder. Only after he is seen off can no one say who he was.
His provenance runs picture first, story after. Toriyama Sekien drew the figure in the eighteenth century and left the character empty; the habit of installing himself in another’s house was attached in 1929 by the folklorist Morihiko Fujisawa. The rank of supreme commander of yokai, leading the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, was laid on later still by Shōwa-era media.
Which is to say he grew each time the record grew. Because what was there first and what came into being by being written down cannot be pulled apart, he leaves the question open: whether setting a thing down is the same as calling it.