“Yuki-Onna” was written by Lafcadio Hearn and first appeared in Kwaidan (1904). Hearn (1850-1904) was an American translator and writer who moved to Japan in 1891 and, through his published work introduced many Americans to Japanese culture and literature.

“Yuki-Onna” is about Minokichi, a young wood cutter. He and Mosaku, an old wood cutter, are caught by a great snowstorm one night; they are on the wrong side of a river and the ferryman has already gone home. So Minokichi and Mosaku take shelter in the ferryman’s hut. The storm is terrible and blows through the cracks in the walls of the hut. Minokichi wakes up to see a beautiful woman all in white blowing a white breath on Mosaku and then leaning over him. She tells him

I intended to treat you like the other man. But I cannot help feeling some pity for you, because you are so young.... You are a pretty boy, Minokichi; and I will not hurt you now. But, if you ever tell anybody–even your own mother–about what you have seen this night, I shall know it; and then I will kill you.... Remember what I say!¹

She then leaps through the door of the hut and is gone. Minokichi can’t tell whether he was dreaming or not, and when he turns to wake Mosaku he finds that his friend is frozen dead. Minokichi is a long time recovering from his night out, but he never tells anyone about the woman in white. The next winter he meets a beautiful young woman who calls herself “O Yuki.” He is attracted to her, and as they walk their conversation turns to marriage, and they find that neither one is married. When they reach Minokichi’s village he asks O Yuki to rest at his house, and she hesitatingly accepts. Minokichi’s mother likes O Yuki, so she ends up staying with Minokichi as his wife. She is a wonderful daughter-in-law and wife, always beautiful despite bearing Minokichi ten children, all handsome and fair like her. One night, after the children have gone to sleep, Minokichi reminisces about the time he was trapped out in the snow, and tells O Yuki about the “Woman of the Snow” he saw. O Yuki shrieks,

It was I-I-I! Yuki it was! And I told you then that I would kill you if you ever said one word about it!...But for those children asleep there, I would kill you this moment! And now you had better take very, very good care of them; for if ever they have reason to complain of you, I will treat you as you deserve!²

And then she melts into a mist and floats through the roof and is never seen again.

“Yuki-Onna” has the feel of folklore, although it is Hearn’s work. (He claimed, however, that it was told to him by a Japanese farmer and that it was a legend in the farmer’s native village). But the figure of Yuki-Onna, a female snow demon who misleads travelers, is authentic to Japanese folklore. Hearn tells “Yuki-Onna” in a simple and straightforward style which works effectively for this subject matter. A complaint of predictability would be pointless, for most modern readers will be sufficiently familiar with folktales to be able to predict how an individual folktale ends even if the reader is unfamiliar with the folktale. What should be valued about “Yuki-Onna” is its imagery, the way in which Hearn so wonderfully captures the tone and cadence of Japanese folktales, and the way in which even non-Western folklore can seem familiar to Western readers.

Interestingly, while we now know of the original Japanese sources of most of the stories in Kwaidan, this is not the case with “Yuki-Onna.” His claim that it was told to him by the Musashino peasant farmer cannot be verified, but in light of the portrayal of similar snow women in Japanese legends of the 1880s and 1890s—they are either the “spirit or personification of snow…or she is a comical character”³—we can only assume that “Yuki-Onna” was Hearn’s original work rather than being based on a Japanese legend. Hearn’s letters suggest that he knew of the snow woman legend a decade and more before writing of “Yuki-Onna,” which has led to speculation that Hearn was influenced by Charles Baudelaire’s poem “The Moon’s Blessings” (original: “Les Bienfaits de la Lune”). Hearn was fluent in French, had translated Baudelaire, and had a particular attachment to “The Moon’s Blessing.”⁴

Print: Lafcadio Hearn, Oriental Ghost Stories. Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2007

¹ Lafcadio Hearn, “Yuki-Onna,” in Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1907), 127.

² Hearn, “Yuki-Onna,” 132.

³ Yoko Makino, “Lafcadio Hearn’s ‘Yuki-Onna’ and Baudelaire’s ‘Les Bienfaits de la Lune,’” Comparative Literature Studies 28, no. 3 (1991): 237.

⁴ Makino, “Lafcadio Hearn’s ‘Yuki-Onna,’” 238.