You leave the last house after dark. Everything that follows is documented folklore, in the order you'd meet it.
At the town's edge, the hour matters more than the road: this is ōmagatoki — "the hour of meeting demons" — when faces stop being readable and the shapeshifters' whole repertoire (noppera-bō, kejōrō) becomes possible.
On the flat road, the first companion is sound. Footsteps fall in behind you and match your pace: betobeto-san. Harmless — step aside and say "after you." From the paddies, a woman-shaped shadow of sand may shower from the trees (sunakake-babaa); something soft presses through your ankles (sunekosuri). Nuisances, all — the road's way of checking you're paying attention.
Then the road misbehaves. Your destination becomes a wall (nurikabe) — sweep at its base, never strike its top. A bucket, a head, or a fireball drops from the great tree (tsurube-otoshi); a shout with no mouth (uwan) detonates beside you — only you can hear it. From the stream: shoki, shoki — the azukiarai, washing beans and debating aloud whether to eat a person. Don't lean toward the sound.
In the hills, the stakes rise. A sparrow chirps overhead in the dark (yosuzume) — in Wakayama it means the wolf-escort has taken your case: the okuri-inu now paces you. Walk steadily and it guards you from everything else on this page. Stumble, and it takes you. If you trip, sit down as if resting; at your gate, thank it and offer something. On the pass itself, hunger may strike from nowhere with killing force (hidarugami) — this is why you carry rice balls, and why you never eat every grain: the grains you leave are for whoever's hunger is still out there.
The looming figures test composure last: the monk who grows as you look up (mikoshi-nyūdō; say "I saw through you" — look down), his one-eyed and giant kin (hitotsume-nyūdō, ōnyūdō), and stones falling from an empty sky (tengutsubute) — the mountain's lord (tengu) reminding you whose land this is.
For the children the road holds one more name, the reason they're called home at dusk: the yadōkai, the night-road's child-taker — and the cloth that drops from the sky in Kagoshima (ittan-momen) targeting the last child in line. The modern road inherits everything: the severed runner (teke-teke) is the betobeto-san's descendant with the courtesy removed.
And on some nights you should not be on the road at all. The almanac has dates — New Year's Eve, Setsubun, the kōshin nights — when the roads belong to something else and the rule is simply stay indoors. Break it in Awa and you meet yagyō-san, a one-eyed giant on a headless horse, who throws you or tramples you. The defence is the strangest in the tradition: put a straw sandal on your head and lie flat — presenting yourself as already walked-on, the road's own furniture, until the road-god passes. Dignity sacrificed, life kept. He carries the same name as the great procession — 夜行 — which is the hundred-demon parade compressed into one rider and a timetable.
And a light may join you. On the Shinano–Tōtōmi border, the rōjinbi travels the wet nights: a flame and an old figure, together, which water cannot put out. Hold your footwear over your head and it veers onto another path; run, and it follows you as long as you keep running.
The rules, compiled: be polite to footsteps; carry food and share it; don't show exhaustion; look down at what looms; never lean toward sounds; keep children ahead of you; check the date before you set out; and get home before the hour changes. Every rule is centuries old, and every one is just good advice wearing a monster.
One last thing worth noticing, having walked the whole road: almost nothing on it wants to kill you. The footsteps want to pass. The wall wants you to sit down. The wolf wants you to keep your composure. The hunger wants a share of your rice. Even the sandal-crown is a courtesy — you are not traffic, please continue. The Japanese night road is less a gauntlet than a sequence of small social tests, and the tradition's steady position is that if you behave well, you get home.
Sources: per linked entries. Assembly note: no new claims; this page only sequences drafted, cited material.