Bakeneko – The Changing Cat

03 Jun 2012 10 Comments

by Zack Davisson in Magical Animal Stories, Yōkai Stories Tags: , ,

Sourced and translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Hyakumonogatari, Kaii Yokai Densho Database, Japanese Wikipedia, Yokai Jiten, Nihon Kokugo Dai-ten, and Other Sources

Late at night, a sublimely beautiful woman walks the street alone. As she passes by the light of a paper lantern, you notice something about her shadow—it is not human. Cast by the flickering light of the paper lantern is the clear shape of a cat.

She is a bakeneko.

What is a Bakeneko?

Bakeneko has been rendered in English in a variety of ways. Monster cat. Ghost cat. But the most accurate translation would be “Changing Cat,” as that is the defining characteristic of bakeneko.

The word bakeneko (化け猫) consist of two kanji; “Bake-“(化け) means to change form, to transform. The kanji is often used with yokai, and indeed a general term for monster in Japanese is obake (御化け) meaning “changer.” “-neko” (猫), of course, just means “cat.”

The word bakeneko is often used as a catch-all term for the mysterious and magical cats of Japan. Nekomata in particular are sometimes called a type of bakeneko. But this is a misuse of the name. Kaibyo(怪猫) is the general term for paranormal cats in Japanese. Bakeneko, just as their name implies, are defined by their ability to transform.

Specifically, bakeneko are able to take human shape, or near-human shape. Some bakeneko maintain a cat form, but they are able to speak human language and wear human clothes. Some legends say that these cat-shaped bakeneko put towels on their heads and dance on their hind legs. Much, much rarer legends are humans who change shape into cats, but which are also called bakeneko.

Because of their shape-shifting abilities, bakeneko belong to a class of yokai called henge (変化), or changing yokai. This includes other shape-shifters such as tanuki and kitsune.

Like most of Japan’s magical cats, bakeneko are said to be cats who have lived a long time. There are stories of split-tailed bakeneko, who appear similar to nekomata. The primary difference between the two is the bakeneko’s ability to adopt human shape. Also like other magical cats, there are stories of bakeneko manipulating the dead, or cursing humans.

Bakeneko Origins – The Lamp Lickers

For the origins of most yokai, there is at best a definitive “maybe” on how they arose. But for the bakeneko, there is a general scholastic consciences that the legends began with fish.

Cats are not indigenous to Japan, and the little “hand-fed tigers” were imported in later years and served as house pets and rat-catchers. Most of Japan at the time lived on a diet of vegetables and grains, with very little supplementary meat or protein. Cats were fed leftovers. However, cats are carnivorous. They don’t do well on a diet of vegetables and grains, and when they are hungry they will take their protein where they can get it. And many households had a ready supply, even if they didn’t know it.

Oil lamps as the time often used rendered fish oil as fuel. To a protein-starved cat this was exactly what they needed, and they would stand on their hind legs to reach up to the lamp to lick out the fish oil. Frightened pet owners looking at the lamplight-cast shadows would see their tiny cat suddenly elongate and stand on two legs as if transforming into a human. Thus was established the connection between bakeneko and shadows.

The cries of cats have also been known to mimic human words and sounds. To an ear already disposed to think their little tabby is shape-shifting at night, imaginations were allowed to run wild and people heard their cats speaking Japanese.

The Bakeneko Rebellion of Nabeshima

While there are many, many bakeneko legends in Japan (too many to tell here), the most famous is the Bakeneko Rebellion of Nabeshima.

This story takes place in Hizen province (modern day Saga prefecture) during the rule of Nabshima Mitsushige (1632-1700). Nabeshima employed a man named Ryuzoji Matashichi to serve as his opponent for Go. One day Matashichi fell out of favor with his lord Nabeshima, and Nabeshima had him put to the death. Matashichi’s mother was heartbroken by this, and poured out her sadness to the family cat they kept, then killed herself with a knife.

The cat licked the blood from the mother, and from this transformed into a bakeneko. Every night the cat would sneak into the castle to torment Nabeshima. The curse only ended when Nabeshima’s loyal retainer Komori Hanzaemon battled the cat and won, saving the Nabeshima house.

The story is famous not only as a legend, but also because it coincides with a real succession conflict in the Nabeshima household. It was made into a kabuki play that debuted at the Nakamura-za theater in the 1840s, titled Hana Sagano Nekoma Ishibumi Shi ( 花嵯峨野猫魔碑史; The History of the Stone Monument of the Demon Cat of Sagano). The play was a hit, but the Nabeshima family successfully petitioned to have the production closed. They were too late, however. The cat was out of the bag, and the bakeneko became a popular monster for future kabuki productions.

Bakeneko also became a popular subject for Edo period ukiyo-e artists. Many of these portray a giant cat in the background, although the cat is often just a symbol showing the true soul of the human character crouching in the foreground, the true bakeneko.

Bakeneko Yujo – TheBakeneko Prostitutes

In the Edo period, books called kibyoshi (yellow books)and sharebon (which translates as “Books of Fashion”) told stories of near-do-wells and salacious tales of life in the pleasure quarters. Considering the Edo periods mania for kaidan weird tales, it was only natural that these two genres should combine to tell tales of bakeneko prostitutes who haunted the lantern-lit lanes of the Yoshiwara.

These stories usually followed a familiar pattern, where a popular prostitute would escort a customer too her room and perform her usual service. Late at night, the customer would wake up and find his lady not there. He would sneak into a different part of the house where he peeked at her, and the dainty woman would be revealed as a bakeneko, usually engaged in tearing the heads off of live fish and shrimp, blood dripping on her face.

Seafood was the dead giveaway for these bakeneko prostitutes, and sometimes customers would present a woman with a live fish to see if her true nature would be revealed. Strangely enough, this plot device was used by Mizuki Shigeru for his character Neko Musume, a bakeneko that appears as a cute little girl but suddenly transforms into a ravenous beast in the presence of fish or mice.

Further reading:

Read more yokai magical animal tales on hyakumonogatari.com:

Iriomote Oyamaneko – The Iriomote Great Mountain Cat

Kasha – The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon

Nekomata – The Split-Tailed Cat

The Cat’s Grave

Iriomote Oyamaneko – The Iriomote Great Mountain Cat

22 May 2012 11 Comments

by Zack Davisson in From Mizuki Shigeru, Magical Animal Stories, Yōkai Stories Tags: ,

Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara

Iriomote Island in the Okinawa island chain is sometimes called the Galapagos Island of the East. When the Iriomote yamaneko (Iriomote mountain cat; 西表山猫) was discovered, it came as no surprise to the inhabitants.  In fact, the islanders insisted there were two distinct species of feline predators on the island, the house pet-sized yamaneko and a great cat the size of a panther. Biologists deny the existence of any “great mountain cat,” even though islanders have several names for the beast.

Yamamaya is the local name for the discovered Iriomote yamaneko, “maya” being the word for cat in the Iriomote dialect.  His larger cousin is alternatively called the yamapikaryā (meaning “the glittering thing on the mountain”), the mēpisukaryā, or the pingimaya. The names mēpisukaryā and pingimaya mean “shinning eyes.” All of the terms come from the beasts’ mysterious eyes that glow  in the dark of the forest.

The Iriomote Yamaneko was discovered in 1965 by Ryukyu University professor Takara Tetsuo. Before the official discovery, the island was investigated by animal-author Togawa Yukio who claimed that there was good evidence for the existence of the yamapikaryā as well.  He estimated that the population was even smaller than the elusive yamamaya, which numbers about 250 cats.  Although evidence of the yamapikaryā has never been found, Iriomote islanders can tell terrifying stories of walking through the dense mountain forests and finding themselves under the gaze of a pair of lamp-like eyes staring out from the dark.

Hearing that, I think the great mountain cats still exist today.

Translator’s Note:

I found this oddity while flipping through my Mizuki Shigeru books looking for cat yokai that would fit with my current theme. The Iriomote yamaneko is an actual animal, a rare endemic cat species discovered as stated in 1965 by Takara Tetsuo.

I think this is an interesting Shigeru entry because it shows just how wide is Shigeru’s definition of the word “yokai.”  In English, the “great mountain cat” is what we would categorize as a cryptid, along the same lines as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other “great cat” legends such as England’s Beast of Exmoor. To Shigeru, however, these are all yokai.

Japan has a few legends of big cats.  The original stories of the neko-mata was of a great beast like a tiger, and not the split-tailed cat we know today. It is unknown if these accounts were based on an actual creature; there is fossil evidence of a small prehistoric Japanese tiger, which could be a factual basis of the yamapikaryā.

Further reading:

Read more yokai magical animal tales on hyakumonogatari.com:

Kasha – The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon

Nekomata – The Split-Tailed Cat

The Cat’s Grave

The Tanuki and the White Snake

The Appearance of the Spirit Turtle

Kasha – The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon

09 May 2012 18 Comments

by Zack Davisson in Death Customs, Magical Animal Stories, Yōkai Stories Tags: ,

Sourced and translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Hyakumonogatari, Kaii Yokai Densho Database, Japanese Wikipedia, Yokai Jiten, Nihon Kokugo Dai-ten, and Other Sources

If you have been a bad person all your life, your troubles are not over when you are dead. During your funeral procession, as the priest and the mourners carry your coffin there is suddenly a crack of thunder and roaring from the sky to steal your dead body and drag it to hell comes … what? A flaming chariot? A cat demon? A cat demon riding a flaming chariot?

Or maybe you have just died at home, and your once beloved house pet thinks that your sin-ridden body would make a delicious snack.

Kasha are one of the most confused of Japan’s yokai. Over the centuries kasha have evolved from a fiery cart pulled by devils to an aged cat that changes form into a corpse-eating monster. Even the calling them yokai is dubious. Although yokai can be a catch-all term for Japan’s monsters, the kasha are more properly demons. They have more in common with Hell-dwellers like oni, and are found on Kamakura period Hell Portraits designed to terrify people into following the righteous path of the Buddha.

What does Kasha mean?

Kasha uses the kanji火車 which translates easily as Fire (火) chariot (車). The kanji can also be read more explicitly as hi no kuruma (火の車 ) meaning the same thing.

That’s the easy part. Now what is a kasha? That’s the hard part.

Kasha – The Fire Chariot

During the Kamakura period (1185–1333), there was an apocalyptic belief in mappō, meaning the Latter of the Days of Law. Like some Christians today, Buddhist believed they were living in End Times and had no more life times in which to which to redeem their souls; they were stuck between Hell and redemption by the Amida Buddha. This lead to a form of art called Hell Scrolls (地獄草紙; Jigoku Zoshi), which depicted the painful suffering awaiting those who didn’t hurry up and get saved.

Most of these paintings depicted oni tearing people apart and feasting on their body parts. And sometimes these oni carried these poor bodies in flaming carts. The belief eventually developed that oni crawled the Earth looking for sinners and piled them in flaming carts or chariots to drag before the dread judge of Hell Emma-O.

As with much Japanese folklore, the image of the flaming chariot took a nap while Japan fought the massive civil war known as the Sengoku era, and was re-awakened during the Edo period yokai boom. Stories began to appear in kaidan-shu collections of the kasha, or hi no kuruma, a flaming cart that descended from the sky. The cart was said to be accompanied by thunder and great winds, and a funeral procession where thunder was heard raised an alarm that the kasha was coming.

The role of the kasha was undecided early on. In the early Edo period book Kii-zodanshu (奇異雑談集; 1687; A Collection of the Idle Chat of Mysterious Things) there is a story called “The Thing that came from the storm clouds to steal a corpse in the Manor House near the rice fields of Echigo.” During a funeral procession there was a loud clap of thunder and a beast riding a flaming cart came down from the sky and snatched the dead body. An illustrator depicted the kasha as being ridden by Raidin, the Shinto deity of thunder and lighting.

Another story, from Shin Chobun-shu (新著聞集, 1749, New Tales of Things Known the World Over) called “Saint Neyo and a visit from the Kasha,” had the Buddhist saint Neyo come out to meet the flaming chariot. But instead of a messenger from Hell, it was an ambassador from the Jyodo Pure Lands. The saint begged the kasha for a little bit more time on Earth, and the cart came back exactly a year later to take him to the Pure Lands.

All of the appearances of this kasha were heavily influenced by Buddhism. Most of the stories follow the same theme; a flaming cart that snatches up the bodies of those who have accumulated a lifetime of misdeeds. To protect these bodies from kasha, priests placed rosaries around the necks of the dead bodies, although that was no guarantee. Some said that the kasha was either a messenger of the divine or the infernal depending on the karmic state of the dead body.

Kasha – The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon

So how did this flaming cart from the sky become a cat?

Like much with yokai, the origin of the cat-like form of kasha is said to come from artist Toriyama Sekien. When Sekien drew a kasha for the second volume of his Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (画図百鬼夜行; “The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons) in 1776, he drew the bizarre cat-demon covered in flames. Like his spiritual successor Mizuki Shigeru, Sekien often blended his own imagination in with folklore, and simply invented things as well. He didn’t begin to add notes to his yokai prints until the successive volumes, so we don’t know why he chose to make the kasha a cat.

For whatever reason, Sekien’s influence on yokai was so profound that people accepted the cat-like kasha and the stories began to follow. In Boso manroku(茅窓漫録; Random Talk of Outside Cogon Grass, 1833) a typical story was told of a funeral procession interrupted by a mighty wind and thunder that swept away the coffin as a kasha came down to retrieve the corpse. This kasha was not the flaming chariot however, and was identified as a moryo, an flesh –eating animal spirit, and was drawn resembling a cat—some also point out the resemblance of the Chinese pronunciation of moryo, kuhasha, as being related to the association of cats with kasha.

In another book, Hokuetsu Seppu ( 北越雪譜; Snow Country Tales, 1837), a story is told—said to come from the Tensho era (1573-1592) in Eichigo province (Modern day Nigata prefecture)—where a funeral is interrupted by a gust of wind and a fireball that comes from the sky. Inside the fireball is a massive two-tailed cat (the calling card of the nekomata) that snatches up the coffin. But the priest attending the funeral beat away the kasha with his staff.

Over time, this cat-form of kasha began to dominate, and other Japanese cat legends became associated with kasha. Like the neko mata and the bakeneko, kasha were said to be transformed house pets that lived an unusual span. Others said it was the presences of corpses that cause the transformation. Cats who jumped over coffins were said to be able to wake the dead. A cat left alone too long with an unattended corpse would transform into a kasha and drag the body away. Fear of the kasha became so great that when someone died the household cats were instantly banished, and coffins were even weighed down with rocks to prevent them from being drug away.

This particular element makes logical sense. Cats eating their dead owners is a real thing. The phenomena is called postmortem predation and, while dogs do it too, cats are well known to waste little time making a meal of their former owner. After a day or two alone with a corpse cats will start to chow down. If a person dies alone, and the corpse is undiscovered for weeks, the family pet might make a nice little feast and leave little left to be discovered. Because of this it doesn’t take too much imagination to see how the flaming chariot that comes from the sky to snatch bodies became mixed with the very real situation of a cat eating a corpse.

Other Kasha

Japan has many other yokai similar to kasha, some even using a variation of the name. The kasha baba is one common variation, which has the same story of someone who snatches corpses from funerals but instead of a cat-like creature it is an old woman. In Kanra-machi in Gunma prefecture there was the legend of the tenmaru that snatched corpses from funerals and graveyards. To protect the dead bodies, caskets were protected by bamboo cages as part of the burial.

Read more yokai magical animal tales on hyakumonogatari.com:

Nekomata – The Split-Tailed Cat

The Cat’s Grave

The Tanuki and the White Snake

The Appearance of the Spirit Turtle

Nekomata – The Split-Tailed Cat

21 Apr 2012 17 Comments

by Zack Davisson in Magical Animal Stories, Uncategorized, Yōkai Stories Tags: ,

Translated and sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujara, Yokai Jiten, Japanese Wikipedia, and other sources

Beware of keeping your sweet and patient house cat for too long. According to Japanese folklore, once that venerable pussy reaches an ancient enough age, its tail will split into two and it will begin to walk on its hind legs. Only then will your cat begins its second life as a nekomata, a cat-like yokai with a split-tail.

What does Nekomata Mean?

Nekomata is not an easy word to translate. Most translations for names of yokai depend on the kanji, and nekomata can be written in three different ways. Note that all three are pronounced the exact same way. The most ancient form was 猫また, which uses the kanji for cat 猫(neko), with the remainder written in hiragana. Words written in hiragana have no inherent meaning and often the definition can only be guessed at.

A later variation wrote nekomata as 猫股 which again uses the kanjI 猫(neko) for cat, but then uses 股 (mata) meaning “forked.” The meaning of this is straight forward, and translates as the descriptive “forked cat.”

But the most common variation is the most confusing. Nekomata is most commonly written as 猫又, which combines 猫(neko) with又(mata) meaning “again. This version directly translates as “the again cat,” but the reason for this is disputed. Some say it stands for the split of the tails, with “mata” being a numerical counter for tails, while some say it refers to the second life of a cat as a nekomata, thus the term “again cat.”

However, both of these kanji are most likely later additions trying to add explanations to a pre-existing word, what in English would be called a folk etymology. In its original form, with “mata” written in hiragana, is thought to relate somehow to the image of the nekomata living in the forest like a monkey, leaping from tree to tree. All of these explanations are, however, pure speculation. Nobody really knows what nekomata means.

The Kamakura Period – The Nekomata of the Mountains

Most Japanese yokai were born during the Edo period, but the nekomata has more ancient roots. Mention of the nekomata first appeared during the Kamakura period (1185-1333), where it was mentioned in the literary jottings of Yoshida Kenko in his scroll Tsurezure-gusa (徒然草; The Harvest of Leisure, also known as Essays in Idleness). Yoshida wrote “Deep in the mountains there is a creature called the nekomata. It is said that it feeds on humans.” At around the same period, Fujiwara Sadaie recorded in the scroll Meigetsuki (明月記; The Record of the Clear Moon, sometimes called Diary of the Clear Moon) that on August 8th in the first year of Tenpuku (1233) in Nanto (modern day Nara prefecture) a nekomata from the mountains killed and ate several people.

These are typical of Kamakura period accounts of nekomata. Far from the bizarre split-tailed cat of modern accounts, the ancient nekomata was a feared beast of the mountains rumored to attack, kill, and eat humans who wandered too deep into the mountain recesses. A physical description is given in the Meigestu-gi saying a nekomata has “eyes like a cat and a body the size of a great dog.”

There was nothing supernatural about these accounts of the nekomata during the Kamakura period, and it was treated like any other mountain predator. It is unknown if these accounts were based on an actual creature; there is fossil evidence of a small prehistoric Japanese tiger, and tigers were often imported from China and one could have gotten lose and made its way into the forest. Suggestions have even been made that ancient nekomata legends are based on a rabies-infected animal explaining its tendency to stalk and attack humans. But again, this is pure speculation.

The Early Edo Period – The Supernatural Nekomata

Like any good folk legend, the stories of nekomata began to change in the telling, and with each passing year nekomata increased in size. In 1685, in the book Shincho Monjyu (新著聞集; A Literary Collection of New Hearings) described the nekomata as being as larger than a wild boar. In 1775 the book Waku-shiori (倭訓栞; A Bookmark of Chinese Characters) described the nekomata to be as large as a lion or a panther, with a cry that resounded through the mountains. By 1809, in the book  寓意草 the nekomata was described as being over six feet long and large enough to carry a dog in its mouth.

The Middle Edo Period – The Nekomata Comes Indoors

The real transformation in the legends of the nekomata came during the mid-Edo period. While the mountains were still considered the abode of the great beasts, a belief arose that nekomata evolved from regular house cats that had lived a very long time. When cats grew old enough they changed into a new form and left they households to begin their new existence as nekomata in the mountains.Because of this, it was considered dangerous to keep a cat for too long in your house.

The belief was expounded on by Yusoku Kojitsu and Ise Fudatake, who wrote in their respective books Ansei Zuihitsu (安斎随筆; The Literary Jottings of Ansei) and Kazusai no Neko (数歳; Cats of Various Ages) that the tail of these old cats would split into two tails at the time of transformation. The scholar Arai Hakuseki further popularized this new belief in his essays on the mysteries of cats that were printed in widely-circulated newspapers.

One of the most famous accounts of nekomata is the 1708 Yamato Kaiiki (大和怪異記; Mysterious Stories from Japan) story The Nekomata Fire (猫股の火) which tells the tale of a samurai whose house is taken over by a poltergeist-like haunting that is only ended when the family cat is killed and revealed to have two tails. This story was later adapted by Mizuki Shigeru for his comic Nekomata.

This version of the nekomata has completely taken over the Kamakura period beliefs, and it is almost impossible to find a modern depiction of nekomata that does not show the split-tailed monster.

Nekomata Art

During the Edo period, illustrated reference books called zukan were published, including the popular kaidan emaki—illustrated kaidan manuals. Nekomata regularly appeared in these manuals.

Possibly the most famous picture of a nekomata comes from the book Hyakki Zukan (百怪図巻; An Illustrated Manual of One Hundred Weird Tales) by Sawagi Sushi. Sawagi drew an unconventional and ironic picture of a nekomata looking like a young woman playing the shamisen. At the time, shamisen were made from the stretched skin of female cats, and the cat looks to be singing a melancholy song while playing an instrument possibly made from a relative. Because the nekomata is dressed in the garb of a geisha, it is also a possible reference to a geisha whose nickname was “Cat.”

Toriyama sekien’s picture of a nekomata from his Gazu Hyakki Yako (画図百鬼夜行; The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons) is also tinged with humor. His illustrations shows three cats, one a nekomata with a split-tale and two regular cats. The nekomata appears to be showing off walking on its hind legs, while the younger cat tries to imitate it can’t, because it isn’t old enough to transform yet.

Like many Japanese folklore creatures, in modern times the nekomata is depicted as cute and is far removed from the ferocious, man-eating beast of the Kamakura period. Probably the most famous modern nekomata is the character Kirara from the comic book InuYasha.

Nekomata and Other Supernatural Cats

Japan is full of supernatural cats and cat-lore, of which the nekomata is only one. Because of the glint in a cat’s eyes and their mysterious nature, cats have been thought to be supernatural from ancient times, and able to deliver curses. It was said that to kill a cat would result in seven lifetimes of inauspicious rebirth.

Other cat yokai include the kasha (火車), a type of demon that arouse from a cat owned by someone who died. If people weren’t careful, the cat would transform into a kasha and steal the body away before a funeral could be held. Nekomata are often mistaken for bakeneko(化け猫), another transformed cat, although they are two different creatures.

You can still see the lingering evidence of nekomata beliefs in place names around Japan. In Echu province (modern day Toyama prefecture) there was a mountain that was said to be the site of several nekomata slayings named Nekomata Mountain, and in Aizu provice (modern day Fukushima prefecture) a mountain named Nekomata Peak is has several nekomata legends associated with it.

Translator’s Note:

This was posted by request for reader Aub Driver, who was looking for references for a nekomata tattoo.  I found a whole lot of history, but not a whole lot of images.  Sorry Aub!  Hope the article sparks some inspiration though!

Further Reading:

Read more yokai magical animal tales on hyakumonogatari.com:

Bakeneko – The Changing Cat

Kasha-The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon

The Cat’s Grave

The Tanuki and the White Snake

The Appearance of the Spirit Turtle

Nure Onago – The Soaked Woman

15 Feb 2012 3 Comments

by Zack Davisson in From Mizuki Shigeru, Magical Animal Stories, Yōkai Stories Tags: , , ,

Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujara

In Tsushima in Nagasaki prefecture, when the rain falls at night, the bakemono known as the Nure Onago appears. The Nure Onago can appear near any body of water, from a small pond to the ocean. Her entire body is drenched, and she is soaked from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

The Nure Onago can be found in several parts of Japan. In Nuwa in Ehime prefecture, it is said that you can see her hair stretched out and floating on the surface of the ocean, and it is from there that she appears. In the Uwa district, the Nure Onago doesn’t come from the ocean, but it is said that she appears from a soaking wet mop of hair.

The Nure Onago always has a wicked smile, and laughs hideously. If by chance you hear her and, thinking she is just a regular woman amused at something, should laugh along with her, then she will attack you swiftly and without mercy.

In Kagoshima prefecture, in the cape of Tajiri where the famous festival for the god Ebisu is held, there is a similar yokai. They call her the Iso Onna (Beach Woman), and like the Nure Onago she is soaked head to foot. The Iso Onna appears anywhere there is sand, either on the actual beach or inland if there is sand. The main different between the Nure Onna and the Isa Onna is the lower half of their bodies. The Isa Onna is said to have no lower half, but instead is formed like a snake below the waist. Both the Iso Onna and the Nure Onago are types of the yokai called Nure Onna.

Most depictions of the Nure Onago show her as being nothing different than a regular human woman, dripping wet. The Nure Onago is a relative of the Hari Onna (Needle Woman) from western Japan.

Translator’s Note

Mizuki Shigeru’s depiction of the Nure Onago is quite different than most portrayals.  Mizuki’s description is more in tune with the name Nure Onna 濡女子 which means literally “Wet Woman-child” or “Soaked Woman-child.” The related Nure Onna is traditionally drawn as a snake with the head of a woman.  She is also sometimes described as carrying a small child (odd considering the lack of arms) which then turns out to be a bundle of leaves.  This story is taken directly from the Ubume legends.

Further Reading:

Read more yokai tales on hyakumonogatari.com

Inen – The Possessing Japanese Ghost

Funa Yurei

Enju no Jashin – The Evil God in the Pagoda Tree

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