What is a nuke-kubi? 'Kubi' signifies either the neck or head. 'Nukeru'
means to creep, to skulk, to prowl, to slip away stealthily. To have a
nuke-kubi is to have a head that detaches itself from the body, and
prowls about at night--by itself.

Koto has been twice married, and her second match was a happy one. But
her first husband caused her much trouble, and ran away from her at
last, in company with some worthless woman. Nothing was ever heard of
him afterward--so that Jin thought it quite safe to invent a nightmare-
story to account for his disappearance. She said that he abandoned Koto
because, on awaking one night, he saw his young wife's head rise from
the pillow, and her neck lengthen like a great white serpent, while the
rest of her body remained motionless. He saw the head, supported by the
ever-lengthening neck, enter the farther apartment and drink all the oil
in the lamps, and then return to the pillow slowly--the neck
simultaneously contracting. 'Then he rose up and fled away from the
house in great fear,' said Jin.

As one story begets another, all sorts of queer rumours soon began to
circulate about poor Koto. There was a tale that some police-officer,
late at night, saw a woman's head without a body, nibbling fruit from a
tree overhanging some garden-wall; and that, knowing it to be a nuke-
kubi, he struck it with the flat of his sword. It shrank away as swiftly
as a bat flies, but not before he had been able to recognize the face of
the kamiyui. 'Oh! it is quite true!' declared Jin, the morning after the
alleged occurrence; 'and if you don't believe it, send word to Koto that
you want to see her. She can't go out: her face is all swelled up.' Now
the last statement was fact--for Koto had a very severe toothache at
that time--and the fact helped the falsehood. And the story found its
way to the local newspaper, which published it--only as a strange