is a manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 anthology created by Clamp

Clamp (manga artists)

, is an all-female Japanese manga artist group that formed in the mid 1980s. Many of the group's manga series are often adapted into anime after release. It consists of their leader , who provides much of the storyline and screenplay for all their works and adaptations of those works respectively ,...

, a creative team

Mangaka

is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...

 made up by Satsuki Igarashi

Satsuki Igarashi

is a member of the all-female manga-creating team Clamp. Her duties in the team are Nanase Ohkawa's sounding board, and the character designer of Chobits and line artist for Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle....

, Ageha Ohkawa, Tsubaki Nekoi

Tsubaki Nekoi

is a member of the all-female manga-creating team Clamp. She is the co-director and her duties in the team include applying screentones and correcting manga illustrations. She was also the lead artist on Legal Drug, The One I Love, Wish, Suki and xxxHolic...

 and Mokona

Mokona

is the pen name of the lead artist, colorist, and composition designer of the all-female manga-creating team Clamp. She was formerly known as . Clamp has had a huge impact on the "manga explosion" according to an account in the New York Times in 2006. Their artwork has been characterized as "fluid"...

.

The three stories revolve around Yuki-onna

Yuki-onna

is a spirit or yōkai in Japanese folklore. She is a popular figure in Japanese literature, manga, and animation. Yuki-onna is sometimes confused with Yama-uba , but they are not the same.-Appearance:...

, a yōkai

Yōkai

are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for "otherworldly" and "weird". Yōkai range eclectically from the malevolent to the mischievous, or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them...

found in Japanese folklore

Japanese folklore

The folklore of Japan is heavily influenced by both Shinto and Buddhism, the two primary religions in the country. It often involves humorous or bizarre characters and situations and also includes an assortment of supernatural beings, such as bodhisattva, kami , yōkai , yūrei ,...

.

Shirahime-Syo was released by Kobunsha

Kobunsha

Kobunsha is a Japanese publishing company. It publishes literature, manga novels, and women's magazines.Kobunsha was first established on October 1, 1945 and belongs to the Kodansha group....

 in 1992, and re-released by Kadokawa Shoten

Kadokawa Shoten

is a well-known Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. Kadokawa has published both manga novels and magazines, such as Newtype magazine...

 in 2001.

Content

Fubuki, a young girl, befriends a spirit wolf who has saved her from a pack of dogs. Complications ensue between the girl's mother and her newfound friend.
A man leaves his lover, Kaya, waiting by an ice-cold lake. He returns years later, believing she will have found someone else and grown old, only to find her, frozen dead in the lake, unchanged from the day he left her.
A soldier loses his way on a snowy mountainside while returning home to his fiancée. In his frustration, he shoots down two herons only to discover upon his eventual return home that the herons had been guiding him.

A man lost in a blizzard meets a yuki-onna and her spirit wolves. He asks her about the snow and her tears. (It is a reoccurring theme in the previous stories that it snows because a yuki-onna cries.) She explains to him that snow is not the result of a yuki-onna's tears, but the tears of man, before leaving with her spirit wolves.

Releases

Shirahime-Syo was published by Kobunsha

Kobunsha

Kobunsha is a Japanese publishing company. It publishes literature, manga novels, and women's magazines.Kobunsha was first established on October 1, 1945 and belongs to the Kodansha group....

 under their Haru Pretty imprint on June 10, 1992 (ISBN 4-334-80161-7). A re-release on Kadokawa Shoten

Kadokawa Shoten

is a well-known Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. Kadokawa has published both manga novels and magazines, such as Newtype magazine...

's Asuka Comics DX line happened on August 2001 (ISBN 4-04-853393-2).

The Snow Goddess Tales have been licensed and translated into English by Tokyopop

Tokyopop

Tokyopop, styled TOKYOPOP, and formerly known as Mixx, is a distributor, licensor, and publisher of anime, manga, manhwa, and Western manga-style works. The existing German publishing division produces German translations of licensed Japanese properties and original English-language manga, as well...

. In 2007, it was licensed in Indonesia by M&C Comics

M&c Comics

M&C Comics is one of the major manga suppliers in Indonesia.As a part of the Kompas-Gramedia Group of book stores, M&C Comics have issued more than 50 manga, with ratings, from "SU:Semua Umur" or General Viewing, to "18+: 18 Tahun ke Atas" or 18 years old and older only.Manga works that are...

.