The Kojiki ('Records of Ancient Matters') is a book that was published in Japan in 712 AD. It contains myths, legends, songs and genealogies - as well as a number of supposedly historical accounts. It is in this source that the creature which would come to be referred to as the 'Nue' would be first mentioned. In this source, it was said to be a mysterious bird (now considered to have likely been the scaly thrush) that cries mournfully in the night. Its harrowing calls were regarded as evil omens - however it is only later that the term once used for this nefarious bird would come to be used in reference to something far more monstrous. This bizarre creature is first described in the Heike Monogatari, an epic account of the Genpei War between the Taira and Minamoto clans for control of Japan in the closing years of the 12th century. In this text, we read a frightful description of a beast with the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the limbs of a tiger and the tail of a snake. Such a chimeric beast can't possibly have been real, right? Well - there are several historical accounts which would seem to provide evidence for the contrary.
 |
| Ino Hayata and the Nue by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi |
Terror in the Palace
The Heike Monogatari discusses a strange incident which supposedly took place in the Summer of 1153. Emperor Konoe was saying in the Seiryō-den of the Kyoto Imperial Palace (situated in the Kamigyō-ku ward of Kyoto today) when a cloud of black smoke suddenly appeared before him. It was accompanied by a bizarre shrieking voice, and the Emperor became quite afraid. After witnessing this manifestation, he would be plagued by nightmares to the point that he fell seriously ill, unable to be helped by any forms of conventional medicine or prayers. Eventually the Emperor's companions started to believe that the palace was under constant visitation from an evil spirit of some kind during the early morning hours of every day. This strange haunting would eventually culminate in a storm suddenly appearing over the Imperial Palace, and the roof being struck with lightning - resulting in it catching alight. Realising at this point that these events couldn't be allowed to escalate further, one of the Emperor's close associates called for legendary samurai Minamoto no Yorimasa to slay the spirit.
That night, Minamoto no Yorimasa ventured to the palace accompanied by his servant Ino Hayata, equipped with a bow and an arrow made from an arrowhead he had inherited from his legendary ancestor Minamoto no Yorimitsu and the tail feathers of a mountain bird. It didn't take long for the monster to show itself. It announced its presence with an unnatural gust of wind, before manifesting once again as a thick bank of black cloud that covered the Seiryō-den. Thinking fast, Minamoto no Yorimasa fired his arrow into the smoke, and a shriek of supernatural agony echoed out of the cloud bank. A dark shape plummeted to the earth, just north of the nearby Nijō Castle. Ino Hayata leapt onto the creature, and promptly finished it off. It was either him, or the samurai himself. Soures differ as to who actually killed the beast. Two or three cries of the common cuckoo were heard above the palace, signalling that peace had returned to Japan. The Emperor's health soon returned to him. As a gesture of gratitude, the heroes were gifted the legendary katana known as Shishiō. This katana remains on permanent display in the Tokyo National Museum.
 |
| The Shishiō Katana |
Mortal Remains
If we continue with the narrative as laid out in the Heike Monogatari, then we can say that the people of Kyoto were fearful enough of incurring the posthumous wrath of the monster in the form of a curse that they put the fallen creature's corpse in a boat and floated it down the Kamo River. The boat floated down through the Yodo River in Honshū's Osaka Prefecture, briefly making landfall on the shore of Higashinari County before floating back out to sea and washing up at its final resting place on the shore between the Ashiya and Sumiyoshi Rivers. The Ashiya locals decided to give the strange corpse a burial service, and built a commemorating mound over the thing's tomb. This mound is still there to this day, and can be easily visited. It would be interesting to see if there is actually anything in the tomb.
 |
| The Nuezuka (the mound built over the Nue's tomb) |
According to the Edo Period geography book known as the Ashiwake Bune (I cannot actually find any more information about this source, and so take what it says with a grain of salt), an incident occurred in which the body of a Nue washed ashore on the Yodo River. The villagers feared a curse, and so notified their head priest. This priest was called Boon-ji, and he apparently recommended that the body of the creature be interred and mourned for, before having a mound built over the top of it. Sometime during the Meji Period (October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912), the mound was supposedly torn down and the local populace were afflicted by the wrath of the beast's vengeful spirit. The mound was swiftly rebuilt and the attacks ceased. There is yet another story taking place during Edo Period involving the body of a Nue having been buried at the Kiyomizu-Dera Buddhist temple in the Kyoto Prefecture - and resulting in a terrifying curse when it was later unearthed.
There are also a lot of other legends surrounding the Nue encountered in 1153, including allegations that it was actually a monstrous form assumed by Yorimasa's wrathful mother and that its corpse turned into a horse which was later raised by Yorimasa. It seems also that a wide array of landmarks across various prefectures have been named after the Nue and have been presumably retroactively associated with Yorimasa's battle with the aerial demon. I will expand on these many rich folkloric expansions of the encounter in another article somewhere down the line.
What was the Nue?
Well, it's interesting to note that the term 'Nue' originally just referred to some completely unknown creature that happened to sound like a certain bird. It was never originally meant to be the chimeric monstrosity that we know today, but it seems from the description of the Yorimasa incident that the beast involved with that encounter was indeed such a chimera. Outside of presuming this story to be entirely mythological and thus a folkloric fabrication, I think there is some interesting precedent for similar cloud-borne entities in the annals of Fortean lore. As a Fortean researcher, I could definitely see Yorimasa's encounter as something that might've really happened.
I shall tell two tales of cloudy strangeness here. The first of these took place in the summer of 1980 in the city of Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. A lone man was walking home one day when he saw a strange cloud floating above the ground with what appeared to be a humanoid shape silhouetted against it. This figure soon became visible, and he would describe it as having had skin as white as snow with two beady black eyes and a long tail. This entity leapt up onto the cloud, causing it to emit a misty vapour, before once again jumping down onto the ground and proceeding towards the witness. Terrified, the man stumbled and fell to the ground, covering himself with his coat and awaiting whatever fate the monster may have had in store for him. Luckily for him, however, when he next dared to take a peek out from behind his coat, the entity was once again stood atop its cloud and appeared to be floating away.
The other story was reported by a tourist visiting Sydney, Australia in the spring of 1965. Late one afternoon, she was looking out of the window of a clifftop house along the seashore, and saw a beautiful pink cloud stationary above the water. She later took a glance out of that same window again, about an hour later, and was shocked to see that the cloud was now moving in her direction, seemingly following a diagonal downwards course of movement. It eventually descended to such a degree that it was below her eye level, and she was able to look down on it to see that it was actually not a cloud at all. Instead, it was a rounded white object with what appeared to be vents on its side emitting grey steam. As this steam enveloped all but the top portion of the object, it turned pink. The cloud seemed to have been an artificial creation. An engine sound was coming from the object.
A bright, glowing ladder was lowered from the object's underside, and a strange humanoid figure clambered down to a lower rung. It perched on this rung and shone a searchlight down at the water below it. At this point, a pink flare seemingly shot out of the water some distance away from the cloud-like craft. The ladder then immediately retracted back into the pseudo-cloud and the object sped away towards the flare. The tourist was able to notice a long-bodied but not clearly visible shape beneath the surface of the water, from which the flare had seemingly been fired. Both the UFO and the strange submarine then promptly vanished in a 'vivid pink flash'.
I have provided these strange accounts to illustrate a specific point. This point is that strange mists and vapours are often associated with the appearance of incomprehensible apparitions of various types, and from what we know from authors like John Keel and Jacques Vallee, it would theoretically not be at all impossible for the intelligence behind the UFO phenomenon to have produced a bizarre chimeric animal to baffle the residents of 1153 Japan.
Sources
Nue - Wikipedia
Nue on Yokai.com
Nuezuka on Tripadvisor.com
Monster! The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena by Neil Arnold
The Daily Problems of Giant Snakes on Japaneseswordlegends.wordpress.com
The Encyclopedia of Strange and Unexplained Physical Phenomena by Jerome Clark
