Nue

The nue is a chimera of Japanese legend, famous from The Tale of the Heike. In the account set in 1153, a black cloud drifted over the emperor’s residence in Kyoto every night and an eerie cry made him ill. The warrior-poet Minamoto no Yorimasa was ordered to deal with it; with his retainer Ii no Hayata he shot an arrow into the cloud, and the creature fell. Hayata finished it off. In the Heike it had a monkey’s head, a tanuki or badger’s body, tiger’s limbs and a snake for a tail; other chronicles vary.

The name probably began as a word for a bird, the thrush sometimes called ‘the night bird’, whose thin whistling call was heard as an ill omen in the Heian court. The cry ‘hyō hyō’ later became the monster’s. After the kill, villagers placed its corpse in a boat and let it drift down the river; it washed up at Ashiya, where it was buried in a mound, the Nuezuka. Other nuezuka and a pond in Nijō Park are claimed in Kyoto and Osaka.

The story was a favourite of Noh (Zeami’s play Nue), kabuki and woodblock artists such as Kuniyoshi and Yoshitoshi. The word nue is used in modern Japanese for anything whose real nature is hard to define.

There is no sighting history; the nue is a cultural legend that is kept alive by shrines and festivals. The Nue-harai festival is held each January at Izunagaoka Onsen in Shizuoka.

A chimera: monkey’s face, tiger’s legs, badger’s or tanuki’s body and a snake-tailed rear; it travelled as a black cloud and cried like a thrush.

Over the Seiryōden, the Heian emperor’s residence in Kyoto, at night.

Noh, kabuki, ukiyo-e and the Osaka Port emblem; the arrowhead at Shinmei Shrine in Kyoto is shown at a September festival.