This spot is located at the parking lot for Goshado. The only way up to Goshando is up a long staircase.

The most popular legend surrounding the Namahage is centered around Emperor Wu of Han-Dynasty China. Legend has it that the seventh emperor of Ancient China flew into the Oga Peninsula astride a white deer. Ostensibly, Emperor Wu came to Oga seeking a medicinal herb that granted eternal youth, accompanied by five servant bats that could transform into ogres. Emperor Wu only ever granted the ogres one yearly holiday, on New Year. Once freed, they descended into the villages to ransack their crops and abscond not only with their livestock, but their women as well. With their backs against the wall, the villagers decided to make a wager with them: “Construct a thousand-stepped stair to the summit of the mountain, and we shall confer to you one girl every year. However, if you should fail, you are never to descend upon our villages again.”

As night fell, the jubilant ogres set about their challenge, lumping rocks they quarried from the mountain with ease. It was nearing daybreak when the ogres laid the 999th step. Panicked, the villagers forced an Amanojaku demon to herald the dawn before it actually came. The ogres were successfully fooled, and in their fury, they pulled a cedar tree from the earth and impaled it upside-down before disappearing. Today, that “inverse cedar” is not actually upside-down, but it has been preserved by the office within the Goshado shrine grounds. As for the villagers, they started celebrating the ogres they thwarted; feasting, drinking, and performing as them once every New Year, for they feared incurring their wrath. And that is how Namahage rituals began. Or so they say.

Are there really 999 steps? Attempting to imagine where the winding stairs begin and end is more daunting than actually counting them step by step.