Iso-onna

Iso-onna is a female kaii said to appear at the seaside in Nagasaki Prefecture and western Kyushu. In typical accounts, she manifests with an indistinct or absent lower body, long hair trailing behind her, and approaches fishermen's boats at night. She is said to board vessels and either drink the blood of those aboard or drag them into the sea. Two interpretations of her origin are preserved in the folklore: she may be the transformed spirit of a dead person from the shore, or a degraded manifestation of a sea deity.

In characteristic legends, a woman attempts to board a fishing boat after nightfall, or is glimpsed sitting on rocks combing her long hair. Those who encounter her are warned not to respond or speak to her; instead, various protective practices such as scattering salt are recommended to ward her off. Variant accounts of Iso-onna are widespread along the coasts of western Kyushu, including Iki and Tsushima in Nagasaki Prefecture, the Gotō Islands, Amakusa in Kumamoto Prefecture, and the Koshikijima islands in Kagoshima Prefecture.

The legend of Iso-onna appears in early modern folkloristic works including Yanagita Kunio's *Kaijō no Michi* (The Maritime Way) and Fujisawa Morihiko's *Nihon Densetsu Sōsho* (Collection of Japanese Legends), as well as in the *Nihon Yōkai Daijiten* (Kadokawa Shoten, 2005). The International Research Center for Japanese Studies maintains records of western Kyushu variants in its database of strange phenomena and yokai lore.