The Nue is an unclassifiable creature recorded in The Tale of the Heike (13th c.), with the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the limbs of a tiger, and a snake for a tail. By night it cried with a voice like a thrush’s, and where the cry was heard, misfortune and sickness followed. In the late Heian era it is said to have descended on the palace in a black cloud, sickening Emperor Konoe, until Minamoto no Yorimasa shot it down with an arrow.
The dread of the Nue lies in its being nameable as no single beast. No part of it is a whole creature, so what has come can never quite be defined—only the ill omen remains. That the thing stays sealed while only its signs can be read runs close to our world’s grain, where observation never fixes its object.