User:SpaceshipCat/Yuki-onna

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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 O-yuki (Yuki = "snow") and married her. She was a good wife. Minokichi and O-yuki had several children and lived happily for many years. Mysteriously, she did not age. They bore 10 children together.

One night, after the children were asleep, Minokichi said to O-yuki: "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, O-yuki 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.

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 some versions, she chose not to kill him because he told her, which she did not treat as a broken promise (technically, Yuki-Onna herself is not a human and thus did not count). In the same story she is shown speaking with a stutter. In a similar legend, Yuki-onna melts away once her husband discovers her true nature. However, she departs to the afterlife afterward the same way.


 * This version was directly adapted into the 1965 anthology film Kwaidan as The Woman of the Snow and loosely adapted as the segment Lovers Vow in the 1990 film Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.
 * The 1968 fantasy horror film The Snow Woman starring Shiho Fujimura is generally considered the most faithful adaptation of Lafcadio Hearn's telling; apart from altering the names of the sculptors and expanding side elements of the narrative, the film stays largely true to the source material.
 * The Pokémon named Froslass introduced in Generation IV of the Pokémon series is based on the Yuki-onna.
 * The character of Mizore Shirayuki in the manga series Rosario + Vampire by Akihisa Ikeda is based on the Yuki-onna.
 * The Yuki-Onna appear in the manga series YuYu Hakusho by Yoshihiro Togashi, as well as its anime adaptation, with one of the leads Hiei being born to one along with his twin sister Yukina.
 * Yuki-onna also appears in the Yo-Kai Watch franchise, but is renamed Frostina in the English versions.
 * The promotional music video for Sasameyuki by Wagakki Band shows lead singer Yuko Suzuhana playing an awakening yuki onna.
 * Letty Whiterock, the stage 1 boss of Touhou: Perfect Cherry Blossom, is a yuki-onna.
 * A Yu-Gi-Oh! card exists called "Yuki-Onna, the Icicle Mayakashi" and is based of the Yuki-Onna

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