Familiar: No
Spirit Animal: No
Mythical: No
Supernatural: Yes
Yuki-onna (“snow woman”) is a spirit or yokai in Japanese folklore. She may also go by such names as yuki-hoe (“snow daughter”), yuki-onago (“snow girl”), yukijorō (“snow woman”), yuki anesa (“snow sis'”), and yuki-onba(“snow granny” or “snow nanny”). They often live in snowy mountains or areas that receive lots of snow yearly.
Yuki-onna are a type of ice/snow elemental spirit that prey on travelers lost in the heavy snowstorms that blanket the Japanese Alps in winter. They appear on snowy nights and possess an otherworldly beauty with long black hair, dark piercing eyes, tall, having pale white or blue tinged skin, and blue lips. Their skin is ageless and as white as snow, but their bodies are as cold as ice. A mere touch is enough to give a human a deep, unshakable chill.
They feed on life force, sucking it from human’s mouths with an icy breath that freezes their victims solid. Her inhumanly pale or even transparent skin makes her blend into the snowy landscape. She often wears a white kimono, 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), and she can transform into a cloud of mist or snow if threatened.
There are various legends about the Yuki-onna’s true identity, such as saying that the yuki-onna is a snow spirit or the spirit of a woman who fell over and perished in the snow. In a setsuwa of the Oguni region of Yamagata Prefecture, a Yuki-jorō (Yuki-onna) was originally a princess of the moon world and in order to leave a boring lifestyle came down to earth together with snow but was unable to go back to the moon and so is said to appear on snowy moonlit nights. 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-like nature and ephemeral beauty.
The Snow Vampire: This version of Yuki-onna hails from four Japanese provinces; Aomori, Gunma, Niigata, and Miyagi. Here it’s said that Yuki-onna is a dreadful snow vampire, haunting the snowy forests, looking to feed. She lives by sucking the vital energy of human body, which is mentioned as seiki. She is said to extract the seiki first by freezing victims to death and then sucking the seiki through the dead victim’s mouth. Especially in Niigata prefecture, it’s said that Yuki-onna likes the seiki of children, so the mothers are warned over there, not to let their children play on snowy nights near a forest.
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, draining her victims’ blood or “life force.” She occasionally takes on a succubus-like manner, preying on weak-willed men to drain or freeze them through sex or a kiss.
Yuki-onna originates from folklores of olden times; in the Muromachi period (approximately 1336 to 1573) Sōgi Shokoku Monogatari by the renga poet Sōgi, there is a statement on how he saw a yuki-onna when he was staying in Echigo Province (now Niigata Prefecture), indicating that the legends already existed in the Muromachi period. In legends from the Ojiya region of Niigata Prefecture, a beautiful woman came to visit a man and became his wife from the woman’s own desire. While the man loved to take long hot baths every night, his wife always refused to bathe. This puzzled him greatly. One particularly cold and snowy night, he insisted that his wife take a bath. Otherwise she would freeze to death in the cold, he said. She protested, but there was no reasoning with the man. Finally she acquiesced. When he went in to check on her a few minutes later, all he found in the tub were half-melted icicles.
In the Aomori and Yamagata Prefectures, there is a similar story about one called the “Shigama-onna.” In the Kaminoyama region of Yamagata, a yuki-onna would come visit an old couple on a snowy night to warm herself by the irori. She was sweet and charming and extremely beautiful. So it was even more of a surprise when, in the middle of the night during a fierce blizzard, she stood up and made to leave the inn. The innkeeper begged her not to go outside, and took her hand to hold her back. It was as cold as ice. Merely touching it sucked all the warmth from the innkeeper’s body. As he tried to keep the girl in the house, her entire body turned into a fine icy mist, and shot up the chimney and out into the night.
Like the snow and winter weather she represents, Yuki-onna has a softer side. Some go so far as to marry humans and live happily together. As supernatural spirits never age, however, their husbands inevitably discover their true identities. This revelation usually ends these happy marriages. 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).
The term Yuki-otoko (“snow man”) refers to the male version of this ice elemental. Far more rare than the Yuki-onna, they appear less often in traditional Japanese mythology and more often in modern interpretations of the legends.
Yukio (pictured above) comes from a rather delightful Otome game (dating sim) called Soul of Yokai. I played it on my Android but I am pretty sure you can download it on IPhones as well. Yukio is a Yuki-okoko who brings you to the world of the yokai. From there, you interact with him, an Oni (demon), and a Tengu (godly avian human) as your perspective loves. I really enjoyed this game for relaxed playing and a sweet story and now there is even a second season out. 10/10 if you are bored and want to delve a bit more into the world of Japanese yokai with a touch of romance.
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