The month is just about halfway done, and I wanted to save some of the more Halloween-ish yokai for a date closer to Halloween… well I think that time has come. Today’s yokai is another one of my favorites: Yuki-onna, the snow woman. There are a few legends surround her, but the most famous one, as told by Lafcadio Hearn (and shamelessly copied from Wikipedia), goes like this:
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, Minokichi 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 whether it was dream or 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.
There are a few other versions of the story, but I like that one best, partially because it’s the first one I heard — or actually saw, on a Japanese ghost stories DVD. She is another very popular yokai in Japanese pop culture, appearing in many comic books, games, and so on.
Can you tell us what was the title of the DVD? Maybe “100 tales of horror”, or something else?
Thanks in advance! 🙂
curiosamente,
Cthulhu
Yuki-onna was from a quite famous movie called “Kwaidan.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwaidan_(film)
It’s quite a beautiful film, I highly recommend it.
That’s story is kind of sad…It also reminds me of “The Blizzard” part from Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams.