 Yuki-onna
(雪女, ゆきおんな, Yuki-onna snow woman) - A spirit or yōkai
found in Japanese folklore. She is a popular figure in
Japanese animation, manga, and literature. Yuki-onna is
sometimes confused with Yama-uba ("mountain crone"), but the
two figures are not the same.
Yuki-onna appears as a tall, beautiful woman with long hair
on snowy nights. Her skin is inhumanly pale or even
transparent, causing her to blend into the snowy landscape
(as she is most famously described in Lafcadio Hearn's
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things). She
sometimes wears a white kimono, but other legends describe
her as nude, with only her face, hair, and pubic region
standing out against the snow. Despite her inhuman beauty,
her eyes can strike terror into mortals. She floats across
the snow, leaving no footprints (in fact, some tales say she
has no feet, a notable feature for many Japanese ghosts),
and she can transform into a cloud of mist or snow if she is
threatened.
The Yuki-onna, being associated with winter and snowstorms,
is said in some legends to be the spirit of an individual
who has perished in the snow and cold. She is at the same
time beautiful and serene, yet ruthless in her killing of
unsuspecting mortals. Until the 18th century, she was almost
uniformly portrayed as evil. Today, however, stories often
color her as more human, emphasizing her ghostlike nature
and ephemeral beauty.
In many stories, Yuki-onna reveals herself to travelers who
find themselves trapped in snowstorms and uses her icy
breath to leave them as frost-coated corpses. Other legends
say that she leads them astray so they simply die of
exposure. Other times, she manifests holding a child. When a
well-intentioned soul takes the "child" from her, he or she
is frozen in place. Parents searching for lost children are
particularly susceptible to this tactic. Other legends make
Yuki-onna much more aggressive. In these stories, she often
physically invades people's homes, blowing in the door with
a gust of wind, to kill them while they sleep (though some
legends require her to be invited inside first).
Exactly what Yuki-onna is after varies from tale to tale.
Sometimes she is simply satisfied to see her victim's death.
Other times, however, she is more vampiric, draining her
victims' blood or "life force". She occasionally takes on a
succubus-like manner, preying on weak-willed men in order to
drain or freeze them through sexual intercourse or a kiss.
Like the snow and winter weather she represents, Yuki-onna
has a softer side. She sometimes lets would-be victims go
for various reasons. In one popular Yuki-onna legend, for
example, she sets a young boy free due to his beauty and
age. She makes him promise to never mention her again,
though, and when he relates the story to his wife much later
in life, his wife reveals herself to be none other than the
snow woman. She reviles him for breaking his promise but
spares him yet again, this time out of concern for the
children she has born him (but if he dares mistreat their
children, she will return with no mercy. Luckily for him, he
is already a loving father). In a similar legend, Yuki-onna
melts away once her husband discovers her true nature.
Information source: “Yuki-onna.” wikipedia.org. Article
date: 16 Feb. 2008. Retrieved: Wikipedia. 16 Feb. 2008
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