Noppera - bo - The Mujina of the Akasaka Road

Noppera-bo - The Mujina of the Akasaka Road translates Japanese folklore through systematic material transformations. The faceless yōkai from Lafcadio Hearn's ghost story becomes a study in geometric volumes: smooth ovoid head, simplified torso, extended arms. The absence of facial features is not lack but sculptural subject—a void that confronts the viewer where recognition should occur.
Created using wood PLA filament and 3D printing, the sculpture inhabits a liminal material state between plastic and wood, echoing the yōkai's ontological uncertainty. Hand-polished surfaces and applied wood patina bridge digital fabrication with traditional craft finishing. The figure emerges from a black cylindrical base with metal support, anchoring supernatural subject matter in contemporary industrial materials.
Part of the "Spells and Magic" collection, this work applies cubist-influenced geometric reduction to mythological entities—rendering the invisible and immaterial through systematic formal constraints. The noppera-bō persists as cultural idea translated across dimensions: from oral tradition to literary account to digital model to physical sculpture, with the essential invariant—faceless encounter—surviving each transliteration.