Japanese mythology includes a vast number of gods, goddesses, and spirits. Most of the stories concern the creation of the world, the foundation of the islands of Japan, and the activities of deities, humans, animals, spirits, and magical creatures...
Oops! Această imagine nu respectă Ghidul de Conținut. Pentru a continua publicarea, te rugăm să înlături imaginea sau să încarci o altă imagine.
The Nue (鵺, 鵼, 恠鳥, or 奴延鳥) is a legendary Japanese yōkai or mononoke.
In the Heike Monogatari, it is described as having the face of a monkey, the legs of a tiger, the body of a tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog) and the front half of a snake for a tail. In other writings nothing is stated about its torso, so it is sometimes depicted to have the torso of a tiger. The Genpei Jōsuiki describes it as having the back of a tiger, the legs of a tanuki, the tail of a fox, the head of a cat, and the torso of a chicken. Due to its appearance, it is sometimes referred to as a Japanese chimera.
It is said to make terribly eerie bird cry "hyoo hyoo" noises that resemble that of the scaly thrush. In the movie Akuryōtō (originally by Seishi Yokomizo), the catchphrase "nights where the nue cry are dreadful" refers to this fact.
The nue is thought to have started appearing in the late Heian period. For a more precise dating, different sources claim different periods, like the Emperor Nijō period, the Emperor Konoe period, the Emperor Go-Shirakawa period, or the Emperor Toba period.
The visual appearance may be a combination of the animals in the Sexagenary cycle, with a northeast Tiger, a southeast Snake, a southwest Monkey, and a northwest Qian (dog and wild boar).
Originally, the nue were stated to be a bird that resembles the green pheasant, but their precise identity is unknown. The 夜 within the 鵺 character is phonetic component and thus does not carry a meaning with it. The character 鵼 (kou or kuu) is determined to be a kind of strange bird. Due to the use of Man'yōgana, the historical spelling is known to have been nuye. At this early time, although, it had a different semantic meaning. It referred to a bird known as White's thrush.
In Japan, they are considered a bird that makes cries at night, and the word can be seen in the Kojiki and the Man'yōshū. The owner of this crying voice was traditionally described as a yellow-red bird as big as a Columbidae, but nowadays there is the accepted theory that it is the scaly thrush. Since the people of the Heian Period regarded the sorrowful sounding voices of this bird as an ill omen, they were considered to be a wicked bird, and it is said that when the emperor or nobles heard its crying voice, they would make prayers that nothing disastrous would happen.
The monster in the Heike Monogatari, in the end, was merely "something that cries with the voice of a nue, its true nature unknown", and was not given a name. But nowadays, this particularly famous monster is usually identified as a "nue".
In a derived sense the word "nue" is also used to refer to entities of unknown true form.
