Makura-gaeshi (Mie)

Makura-gaeshi ("pillow turner") is a household entity that shifts a sleeper's pillow, reverses its orientation, or disturbs the bedding. Forms differ by region, including child shapes, priest shapes, and white shadows. The figure is tied to the folk dread of placing one's head to the north (the direction in which the dead are laid), and is told as the work of small demons, child-form entities, or unattended dead in the house. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (Anei 8, 1779) shows "Makura-gaeshi" as a child-form entity reversing the pillow of a sleeper. Edo-period kaidan and essays record related cases. Yanagita Kunio-school folklore later read the figure in connection with bedding customs and the orientation of death. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies Yokai Folklore Database organize the tradition. In Mie and the Shikoku and Chugoku highlands the figure was also told as a moral against restless sleep in children.