YUKI ONNASnow woman

Alina BordeianuWiki

Yuki Onna in anime Start

She is a popular figure in Japanese literature, manga, and animation.

Yuki Onna ( 雪女 – snow woman) is a spirit or yōkai in Japanese folklore.

Yuki Onna

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.

She sometimes 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.

Appearance

She may also go by such names as:yuki-musume (snow girl)yuki-onago (snow wench)yukijorō (snow harlot)yuki anesa (snow sis)yuki-omba (snow granny or snow nanny)yukinba (snow hag)yukifuri-baba (snowfall hag)

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

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.

In many stories, Yuki-onna appears to travelers trapped in snowstorms, and uses her icy breath to leave them as frost-coated corpses. In other stories, she often invades homes, blowing in the door with a gust of wind to kill residents in their sleep.

Sometimes, 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.

Yuki-onna occasionally takes on a succubus-like manner, preying on weak-willed men to drain or freeze them through sex or a kiss.

What Yuki-onna is after varies from tale to tale. Sometimes she is simply satisfied to see a victim die.

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 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. However, she departs to the afterlife afterward the same way.

Yuki Onna

yuki-musum

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yukijorō

yuki anesayuki-

onago

yuki-omba

yukinba

yukifuri-baba