Monster of the Week: Mishipeshu

Are you a woman? Are you passionate, wanton, and sinful? If so, I have two things to say to you:
1) Respect.
2) You may be at risk of becoming a violent, headless vampire.

Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Japan does, at least in this case.

The disembodied vampire monster head Nukekubi from Japanese mythology.

Translating as “removable neck” in English, the Nukekubi are a race of vampires with some, shall we say, unique characteristics. By day, they appear as perfectly normal women. But when night falls, and the lady falls asleep, her head detaches from her body and is able to roam far and wide in search of food–which is, of course, the blood of the living. Some don’t stop there, however, as they are known to occasionally bite their victims to death. That might sound brutal at first, but when you consider that the curse of the Nukekubi can befall a woman for many reasons, from minor promiscuity to transgressions committed by her male relatives that have nothing to do with her, it starts making a lot more sense.

There is no cure for Nukekubi…ism, I guess we’d call it? But killing them is relatively easy. Since the Nukekubi’s head and body must be reattached by first light, all you have to do is move the body while it’s sans head to a location where the head cannot find it. Very simple, and yet another reason that sometimes, being a woman totally SUCKS.

See also: Rokurokubi (aka “long neck” or “pulley neck”). Same type of thing, except instead of full decapitation, the neck stretches until it’s long and tentacle-like, with the head still attached to the shoulders. So…that’s fun.