Nure-onna (Kumamoto)

Nure-onna ("wet woman") is a serpent-bodied female entity of beaches, riverbanks, and lakeshores. With long black hair on a woman's upper body and a snake's lower body, she calls people to the water and drags them in or drinks their blood. The representative pattern shows a long-haired woman weeping on a beach at night who tries to hand a baby to a passerby and then coils her serpent body around him. Cases are told along the Yatsushiro Sea coast of Kumamoto, the Ariake Sea, and the coasts of Nagasaki and Oita. Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyo, in no maki (Anei 5, 1776) depicts Nure-onna with text placing her in the Saikaido. The Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841) also collects the figure. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies Yokai Folklore Database organize the tradition.