12 Demons of Xmas Day 4: Yuki-onna
The Japanese snow demon who will lure you to your doom! (With a baby!)
Today’s comic is all about my favorite Japanese snow demon, the yuki-onna! The yuki-onna (or snow woman, in Japanese) is a mythical being with lots of local variations depending on which region of Japan you’re from. In most cases, the yuki-onna appears as a woman, though she’s made of snow and ice and can change her form so long as she doesn’t melt.
Unlike other winter demons, the yuki-onna is not always evil. In her less frightening appearances, the yuki-onna turns up as a young and beautiful woman seeking refuge from a snowstorm. If you let her inside, her hands are as cold as a corpse, and she has a beautiful, mournful appearance. She may sit by the fire to warm herself, but if she stays too long, she loses shape, transforming into a wild flurry of snow that might escape out an open window or up the chimney.
Not necessarily dangerous, but still pretty unsettling. It wouldn’t be my favorite thing to have my guest melt all over the carpet, but I guess it’s better than being eaten by a cannibalistic scarecrow.
It’s said that heat is the yuki-onna’s only weakness. In one story, a young man falls in love with a yuki-onna and marries her, thinking she’s a mortal woman. One day, the young husband decides to go into the baths and asks his new wife to come with him. She’s reluctant to go, but eventually goes in anyway (it’s unclear whether this is by force or persuasion). But as soon as she walks into the hot waters, she disappears in a cloud of steam.
When the steam clears, all that’s left are a few thin icicles floating in the bath water.
But while there are some non-threatening stories about the yuki-onna, in most places she’s seen as a dangerous creature who will try to entice you out into the snow for one reason or another, only for you to meet a bitter, frosty death.
In many places, the legendary yuki-onna shape-shifts into a woman with a child, and will ask passers-by to hug the child to give it warmth. If you agree to take the child, it becomes heavier and heavier, trapping you in the snow until you’re buried alive, clutching the yuki-onna’s pretend baby to save it from the cold.
My favorite part of the legend is this: if you refuse to hold the baby, or if you refuse to speak to the yuki-onna when she speaks to you, she’ll shove you down a snowy valley.
(Iconic, tbh.)
Strangely, if you do hold the yuki-onna’s pretend baby, and if you do manage to withstand the ever-increasing weight of it, it’s said that you’ll acquire great physical strength for the rest of your life. The yuki-onna might even transform into gold or some other treasure as a reward.
I personally like how some parents used the yuki-onna to scare their children into not going outside during a snowstorm. There are stories of her showing up outside a family’s door and leading children off to play, only to steal them away into the snow forever. In some places the yuki-onna eats children whole, while in other places she steals their livers and leaves them to die, liver-less in the snow.
So the next time it starts to flurry outside, be wary if a woman appears to you in the snow. And if she asks you to hold her baby, your best bet is to pull out a blow torch and see if you can melt the two of them before they toss you down a snowy valley.
Otherwise, get ready to say goodbye to your liver. Or to be buried in snow, clutching a fake baby to your chest.
Obviously, because she’s such a charmer, I thought it’d be nice to keep the yuki-onna as a phone Lock Screen this winter. So here she is in all her icy glory:
I hope you enjoyed the legend of the yuki-onna, and that you’re staying safe from the weather (and things like COVID) in whatever corner of the world you’re in. We just had a huge snowstorm in our town, and while I didn’t meet any yuki-onnas, I did help a man and his pug get their car out of a snowdrift yesterday. After an afternoon of sledding in the park, my kids and I came back to the lot to find this car squealing its tires in a pile of snow on top of an a layer of solid ice.
We pushed his car out of the snow and into the street, and then me and the kids piled back into the car…
…and got stuck in the same snowdrift two minutes later.
Thankfully, a group of teens who had been snowboarding nearby rushed down the hill and pushed us out, too. It felt incredibly poetic—there are no saviors. We save and are saved, we give and we take, we help and we need, and it’s not always in a direct circle.
Sometimes we hold a heavy baby in a snowstorm.
This week, we received so much help from folks near and far. If you read my last post, you’ll know that my partner tested positive for covid over the weekend. That threw us into isolation mode, with my partner sequestering himself in part of the house while I took over all the roles—parent, cook, housekeeper, shoe-finder, bedtime wrangler, homeschool enforcer, etc.
This week also happened to be the one-year anniversary of my friend Annie’s death. She died after a swift and devastating fight with pancreatic cancer in the early hours of December 16th, 2020, so going into this week felt a bit like an emotional crucible already.
Thankfully, by some stretch of miracle or science, our covid scare was just that—a scare. After several rounds of daily covid tests for the whole family, and with no covid symptoms whatsoever, we are all testing negative, including my partner.
We’re still being cautious, but after another round of negative covid tests, we decided to let my partner stop isolating.
So in addition to having my partner and co-parent back, I’ll be back to sleeping in my own bed, and that feels amazing.
Thank you to everyone who left me such kind messages this week, and who showed up on our porch with Thai food and muffins and baskets of fruit. It made me feel so much less alone, and so grateful to be held by a community—both in this space and in the real world, with its covid scares and its cancer deaths, its snowstorms and its winter demons. You’re all golden, and I just feel like the luckiest person knowing you’re out there.
All my love,
🖤Becca Lee, the Haunted Librarian🖤
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These are pure gold. Thank you!