In these narratives, the village is a closed ecosystem. There are no samurai, no shoguns; only rice paddies, freezing winters, and the desperate need for heirs. The yobai custom was simple: an unmarried young man, having identified a target (often via the village's tacit "matchmaking" festivals), would silently visit an unmarried woman’s nando (bedroom/storehouse) after the household slept.
Yobai was not romance. It was mura —the village system. It prevented blood feuds (if a pregnancy occurred, the man was obligated to marry or pay lifetime child support). It redistributed labor (a good night-crawler was a good harvester). And it controlled violence (rape was punished brutally, but consensual crawling was the village’s release valve). yobai mura banashi
The banashi exist to remind us of the absurdity of this system. They are the jokes whispered by the grandmothers—the ones who, as girls, kept a sickle under their pillow just in case the wrong shadow came through the window. In these narratives, the village is a closed ecosystem