Mujina

[1][2] Adding to the confusion, it may also refer to the introduced masked palm civet[citation needed], and in some regions badger-like animals or Japanese raccoon dog are also called mami.

Some tales also describe the badger inflating their scrotum to cover "eight mats", referring to the size of a room.

[3][6] When in this form, the mujina normally inhabits the underneath of a Buddhist temple, as well as carry an upside-down lotus leaf on its head.

[6] Of course, these badgers weren't limited to purely human forms- they have been able to transform into dazzling comets, fence posts, stones, trees, and so on.

[4] In the story "The Badger's Trick", a man stops at a lone hut during a trip, only to find out that it was a shapeshifting mujina who had disguised itself as a house.

[4] Actions of the mujina can range from mere luring of the target to a location and disorienting them with constant shapeshifting, to baiting the victim into being killed.

They are first seen in literature in the Nihon Shoki in the part about Empress Suiko's 35th year (627), where it states, "[I]n two months of spring, there are mujina in the country of Mutsu (春2月、陸奥国に狢有り), they turn into humans and sing songs (人となりて歌う)" demonstrating that, in that era, there was the general idea that mujina shapeshift and deceive humans.

"[8] The story in Lafcadio Hearn's kaidan collections called "Mujina"[9] about the witnessing of a faceless ghost (a noppera-bō) is also well-known.

Noted Hawaiian historian, folklorist, and author Glen Grant, in a 1981 radio interview, dismissed the story as rumor, only to be called by the witness herself, who gave more details on the event, including the previously unreported detail that the mujina in question had red hair.