Vampires are staples of Halloween, but there’s not a whole lot of variety to them. You can make them sad Frenchmen, dress them in tight leather or relocate them to New Zealand — but they’re still creatures who drink human blood, sunburn easily, can’t have Italian cuisine and sometimes turn into bats. That’s basically it — in the West at least. In Japan, though, you get a little more variety thanks to bloodsucking monsters like the following:
1. Suiko: The Water Tiger Vampires
Living in and around lakes, rivers and the like, suiko (literally, “water tiger”) get their name from the claw-like hooks growing out of their knees. These support small, imp-like bodies covered in impenetrable scales (in case anyone ever tries to come at them with a stake). Much like Dracula, suiko feed on human blood, which they obtain by drowning swimmers and sucking them dry like a juice box. In the process, they also consume the victim’s soul, and the more souls they collect, the tougher they look to their boss, the Dragon King, which comes with all sorts of perks, like career advancement, etc.
The worst part is that giving up swimming won’t help: Suiko can easily survive on land. Given that suiko can also use hypnosis, become invisible and survive in sunlight, you’d probably have a better chance of surviving an attack by a land tiger than one by a water tiger.
2. Nukekubi: The Dissociative Vampires
Sometimes in movies, it’s possible to kill a vampire by cutting off its head. Sadly, that would not work on nukekubi “removable head” vampires. The reason why is right there in the name. During the day, these creatures are normal human women unaware they’re under a nukekubi curse that at night will cause their heads to detach from their bodies and fly off into the night to feed on blood.
In most versions of the myth, the afflicted women have no memory of their nighttime killings, causing them to start families and basically go about their lives blissfully ignorant. That’s unfortunate, as the curse is passed down from mother to daughter. Legends from Ibaraki say that some nukekubi can be cured by eating the liver of a white dog, but in most cases, the only cure is keeping the flying vampire head from reattaching itself to its body before sunrise — so, basically, death.
3. Iso Onna: The Vampire-Hair Women by the Sea
Native to the shores of Kyushu, the beautiful iso onna, or “coast women,” are vampires that like to prey on their lunch’s goodwill as well as their blood. Prowling the coastline and dripping wet, iso onna look like victims of a shipwreck at first glance, causing passing men to rush to their help. Once they’re close enough, iso onna paralyze them with a piercing shriek and drag them into the sea. There, they use their prehensile hair to jab into their victims’ bodies and suck their blood out.
As there are many versions of the iso onna myth, these bewitching vampires come in many forms. In some, they have hypnotic voices that men find irresistible. In others, they’re translucent and kind of look like a Western cartoon ghost from the waist down. Some other myths say that iso onna are actually kaiju-sized and can destroy ships with their bare hands.
According to stories from Kitakyushu, iso onna are actually crab spirits and as such can’t swim. You can avoid them out on the sea provided you don’t drop any ropes into the water that they can use to scuttle up onboard and use your blood for shampoo.
4. Nobusuma and Nodeppo: The Vampire Flying Squirrels
Not only does Japan have TWO vampire flying squirrels, but they also help explain the invention of Pokémon, since both sanguineous squirrels exhibit a total disregard for evolutionary principles.
The legend of nobusuma says that when a bat reaches an extremely old age, it transforms into a magical Japanese giant flying squirrel, a real but skittish herbivore that uses the skin between its limbs to glide from tree to tree. Nobusuma can do the same, but when they spot a human, they glide onto the person’s face, latch on like the Facehugger from Alien and start sucking out their victim’s blood. They can also eat fire, and between that and being small and adorable, nobusuma are kind of like reverse dragons.
Nodeppo are very similar to nobusuma except for two key differences. They evolve from raccoon dogs, which — while still making Darwin angry — isn’t as big a leap as from bat to squirrel. Also, they shoot bats out of their mouths. That sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense, but there’s no other way of putting it. These vampires shoot bats. Out of their mouths. Like a gun. If there were a gun capable of shooting bats instead of bullets. Hence their name, which translates to “wild gun.”
5. Jubokko: The Vampire Trees
Legends say that sakura have pink blossoms because there are bodies buried beneath them that nourish them with blood. That, of course, is nonsense. When a tree sucks blood through its roots, it doesn’t become a beautiful cherry; it becomes a jubokko (“tree child”), a kind of vampire tree. OBVIOUSLY.
Mainly found on bloody battlefields — which Japan has had no shortage of throughout the centuries — these once-regular trees develop a taste for blood and become jubokko. These bloodthirsty trees won’t just wait around for someone to conveniently die within reach of their root systems — oh, no. Instead, jubokko will use their suddenly human-limb-like branches to catch passersby, pierce their bodies and suck out their blood through hollow tube-like twigs. The exsanguinated corpse will then slowly decay beneath the tree, joining the pile of skeletons already there, which — not to victim blame or anything — the most recent tree-snack should have spotted and kept as far away from as possible. That’s why they put crossbones on bottles of poison — bones are a universal sign for “do not approach.”
