A Demon a Day- Yuki-onna

Yuki-onna (meaning Snow Woman) is a demon/spirit from Japanese folklore associated with winter.

She appears as a beautiful woman with long dark hair and inhumanly pale skin. Sometimes she’s described as being naked other times wearing a white Kimono which, along with her skin, makes her near invisible in the snow until she chooses to make herself known.

Although modern portrayals (she’s a popular character in Japanese anime and literature) have attributed a more human, sometimes even gentle nature to her, the Yuki-onna was originally depicted as a cruel and ruthless spirit. Legends told how she would appear to lost travelers or people trapped in snowstorms, following them or misguiding them before ultimately freezing them to death with her icy breath or a touch. Others have it that she was also able to enter someone’s house and slowly drain the life from her victims as they slept.

One variation on the legend that I particularly like is that she would sometimes appear holding a baby. After appealing to the compassion of her victims, who quite understandably feel the need to help the (possibly naked) woman standing in the snow with a child, she kills them as they offer to take the child from her.

She’s not completely without mercy though. One quite famous legend (read it here) has it that she takes pity on a young man named Minokichi due to his youth and beauty, and not only spares his life but also later marries him.

Unfortunately, she’s eventually betrayed by her husband and she leaves him, no doubt to revert back to the murderous spirit demon she was before! (Nice going Minokichi).

When viewed as a representation of winter, Yuki-onna symbolizes its often contrasting nature perfectly; she’s beautiful yet brutal.

While her character, her nature, is symbolic of death in winter (she’s the mythological explanation for dying of hypothermia out in the snow or ill health from the cold etc) I think she also symbolizes death in general really well. She can’t be reasoned with, she makes no concessions for age or circumstances and she’s absolutely unrelenting. As the legend goes, once she has her eye on you, you simply can’t escape.

She is inevitable death. That makes her a pretty significant demon in my opinion!