The Nure-onna ("wet woman") is a creature with a woman’s head and a giant serpent’s body, appearing at the water’s edge with long, perpetually wet hair. She is known from Toriyama Sekien’s Edo-period illustrated bestiary, the Gazu Hyakki Yagyo.
Her core is the hybrid — human and beast fused into one body. The structure of a woman’s face approaching above a beast below holds both the lure and the danger of the waterside at once.