Nue

Its body is usually described as a chimera: the head of a monkey, the torso and legs of a tanuki, the limbs and claws of a tiger, and a snake in place of a tail, though some tellings vary the exact mixture of animals.

According to the Heike Monogatari, the warrior Minamoto no Yorimasa was called upon to end the affliction and, after the nue had eluded ordinary countermeasures, shot it down with a bow in the darkness above the palace, guided by the sound of its cry and, in some tellings, the light of a companion's torch.

Beyond the Yorimasa episode, the term nue came to be used more broadly in later Japanese language and literature as a figure of speech for something monstrous, ambiguous, or impossible to pin down — a person or situation described as "nue-like" (nue-teki) for being chimeric, evasive, or hard to categorize.

In Japanese folklore, the nue is a chimeric yokai with the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki (or raccoon dog), the limbs of a tiger, and a snake for a tail, whose eerie cry is said to portend misfortune or illness.

whose cry unsettled the Emperor Konoe (some tellings name a different emperor) and was blamed for a mysterious illness or nightly terror afflicting the court.