Just-onna
The Nure-onna ( Japanese. 濡 女 , literally: “wet woman”), locally also called Iso-onna ( 磯 女 ; German “coastal woman”) , is a fictional being of Japanese folk belief . She is a yōkai and is considered vicious.
description
The Nure-onna has According to tradition, the upper body and head of an attractive woman and the body of a amphibians like water being, like a sea serpent . Your snake body should be up to 3.50 m long.
The Nure-onna appears as a bathing woman, often accompanied by the Yōkai Ushi-oni (a bull-headed sea demon ). Both demons are man-eating and lie in wait for unsuspecting beachgoers. While the Nure-onna asks her victim to briefly hold the baby she is carrying for her, Ushi-oni hides in the nearby water. If the victim does a favor and takes the baby in her arms, calls the Nure-onna Ushi-oni, who jumps out of the sea and pulls the victim into the water. If the Nure-onna is alone, she wraps her body around the unsuspecting and crushes him. The victim struggles to escape because, surprisingly, the baby in his arms has become heavier and heavier and pulls the fleeing man to the ground. The victim realizes too late that the supposed "baby" was in reality just a magical stone wrapped in cloths.
folklore
A well-known legend is told in Shimane Prefecture : A young priest narrowly escaped the ambush of a Nure-onna ( called Iso-onna in legend ) by throwing her the cloth filled with magical stones. It had seemed suspicious to him that a woman would simply force her baby on a complete stranger. Because the Nure-onna must not lose her magical bundle, she had to catch it - but since the bundle magically becomes heavier as soon as it changes hands, the Nure-onna sank in the wet sand.
According to another popular anecdote , a man was saved from the attack of the pair of demons when his sword came to life and Ushi-oni stabbed Ushi-oni up to the hilt. The sword itself, which was an ancient family heirloom, was lost in the attack, but the scabbard was left behind and was guarded like treasure afterwards.
literature
- Michaela Haustein: Mythologies of the World: Japan, Ainu, Korea. ePubli, Berlin 2011, ISBN 3844214070 , p. 55.
- Zilia Papp: Investigating the Influence of Edo- and Meiji Period Monster Art on Contemporary Japanese Visual Media . University Press, Saitama 2008, pp. 164-165 ( PDF download ).