Yuki-onna - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

is a spirit or 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...

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 ,...

. She is a popular figure in Japanese literature

Japanese literature

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...

, 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...

, and animation. Yuki-onna is sometimes confused with Yama-uba

Yama-uba

Yamauba, Yamamba or Yamanba are variations on the name of a yōkai found in Japanese folklore.-Description in Classical Japanese Folklore:...

("mountain crone

Crone

The crone is a stock character in folklore and fairy tale, an old woman who is usually disagreeable, malicious, or sinister in manner, often with magical or supernatural associations that can make her either helpful or obstructing. She is marginalized by her exclusion from the reproductive cycle,...

"), but they are not the same.

Appearance

Yuki-onna appears on snowy nights as a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair and blue lips. Her inhumanly pale or even transparent skin makes her blend into the snowy landscape (as famously described in Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn , known also by the Japanese name , was an international writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things...

's Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things
, often shortened to Kwaidan, is a book by Lafcadio Hearn that features several Japanese ghost stories and a brief non-fiction study on insects...

). She sometimes wears a white kimono

Kimono

The is a Japanese traditional garment worn by men, women and children. The word "kimono", which literally means a "thing to wear" , has come to denote these full-length robes...

, but other legends describe her as nude, with only her face and hair 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 feature of many Japanese ghosts

Yurei

are figures in Japanese folklore, analogous to Western legends of ghosts. The name consists of two kanji, 幽 , meaning "faint" or "dim" and 霊 , meaning "soul" or "spirit." Alternative names include 亡霊 meaning ruined or departed spirit, 死霊 meaning dead spirit, or the more encompassing 妖怪 or お化け...

), and she can transform into a cloud of mist

Mist

Mist is a phenomenon of small droplets suspended in air. It can occur as part of natural weather or volcanic activity, and is common in cold air above warmer water, in exhaled air in the cold, and in a steam room of a sauna. It can also be created artificially with aerosol canisters if the...

or snow if threatened.

Behavior

Some legends say the Yuki-onna, being associated with winter and snowstorms, is the spirit of someone who perished in the snow

Snow

Snow is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by...

. She is at the same time beautiful and serene, yet ruthless in killing unsuspecting mortals. Until the 18th century, she was almost uniformly portrayed as evil. Today, however, stories often color her as more human, emphasizing her ghost

Ghost

In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...

-like nature and ephemeral beauty.

In many stories, Yuki-onna appears to travelers trapped in snowstorms, and uses her icy breath to leave them as frost-coated corpses. Other legends say 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, they are 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 invades homes, blowing in the door with a gust of wind to kill residents in their sleep (Some legends require her to be invited inside first.)

What Yuki-onna is after varies from tale to tale. Sometimes she is simply satisfied to see a victim die. Other times, she is more vampiric

Vampire

Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

, draining her victims' blood or "life force." She occasionally takes on a succubus

Succubus

In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus is a female demon appearing in dreams who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus...

-like manner, preying on weak-willed men to drain or freeze them through sex 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 because of his beauty and age. She makes him promise never to speak of her, but later in life, he tells the story to his wife who reveals herself to be the snow woman. She reviles him for breaking his promise, but spares him again, this time out of concern for their children (but if he dares mistreat their children, she will return with no mercy. Luckily for him, he is a loving father). In a similar legend, Yuki-onna melts away once her husband discovers her true nature.

Lafcadio Hearn's version

A long time ago, there lived two woodcutters, Minokichi and Mosaku. Minokichi was young and Mosaku was very old.

One winter day, they could not come back home because of a snowstorm. They found a hut in the mountain and decided to sleep there. On this particular evening, Mosaku woke up and found a beautiful lady with white clothes. She breathed on old Mosaku and he was frozen to death.

She then approached Minokichi to breathe on him, but stared at him for a while, and said, "I thought I was going to kill you, the same as that old man, but I will not, because you are young and beautiful. You must not tell anyone about this incident. If you tell anyone about me, I will kill you."

Several years later, Minokichi met a beautiful young lady, named Oyuki (yuki = "snow") and married her. She was a good wife. Minokichi and Oyuki had several children and lived happily for many years. Mysteriously, she did not age.

One night, after the children were asleep, Minokichi said to Oyuki: "Whenever I see you, I am reminded of a mysterious incident that happened to me. When I was young, I met a beautiful young lady like you. I do not know if it was a dream or if she was a Yuki-onna..."

After finishing his story, Oyuki suddenly stood up, and said "That woman you met was me! I told you that I would kill you if you ever told anyone about that incident. However, I can't kill you because of our children. Take care of our children... " Then she melted and disappeared. No one saw her again.

In some versions, she chose not to kill him rather because he told her which she did not treat as a broken promise given that he never told anyone else (technically, Yuki-Onna herself is not a human, and thus did not count). However, she parts to the afterlife afterward the same way.

In popular culture

In Nurarihyon no Mago
Nurarihyon no Mago
Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, known in Japan as is a manga series written and illustrated by Hiroshi Shiibashi. The series was first published in Shueisha as a oneshot in 2007. The manga has been continuously serialized in the Japanese manga anthology Weekly Shōnen Jump since March 2008 and has...

, a Yuki-onna is a type of youkai who hails from the Tono region. Two members of the main character's Hyakki Yakō
Hyakki Yako
thumb|300px|"Hyakki Yakō" by [[Kawanabe Kyōsai]], collected in [[British Museum]]Hyakki Yakō was a Japanese folk belief. The belief holds that every year yōkai, the Japanese supernatural beings, will take to the streets during summer nights. Anyone who comes across the procession will die, unless...

is a Yuki-onna.
In the Bleach anime, a zanpaku-to spirit named Sode no Shirayuki(the sword is owned by Rukia Kuchiki
Rukia Kuchiki
Rukia is 4foot 8 . is a fictional character in the anime and manga series Bleach created by Tite Kubo. In the series, Rukia is a Soul Reaper in charge of slaying evil spirits known as Hollows...

)is depicted as a yuki-onna with near total mastery of ice.

External references

The Obakemono Project: Yuki-onna
An article that references Yuki Onna in the movies Japanzine By Jon Wilks

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Appearance

Behavior

Lafcadio Hearn's version

In popular culture

See also

External references