Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things

YUKI-ONNA

In a village of Musashi Province (1), there lived two woodcutters:
Mosaku and Minokichi. At the time of which I am speaking, Mosaku was an
old man; and Minokichi, his apprentice, was a lad of eighteen years.
Every day they went together to a forest situated about five miles from
their village. On the way to that forest there is a wide river to
cross; and there is a ferry-boat. Several times a bridge was built
where the ferry is; but the bridge was each time carried away by a
flood. No common bridge can resist the current there when the river
rises.

Mosaku and Minokichi were on their way home, one very cold evening,
when a great snowstorm overtook them. They reached the ferry; and they
found that the boatman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other
side of the river. It was no day for swimming; and the woodcutters took
shelter in the ferryman’s hut,—thinking themselves lucky to find any
shelter at all. There was no brazier in the hut, nor any place in which
to make a fire: it was only a two-mat[1] hut, with a single door, but
no window. Mosaku and Minokichi fastened the door, and lay down to
rest, with their straw rain-coats over them. At first they did not feel
very cold; and they thought that the storm would soon be over.

The old man almost immediately fell asleep; but the boy, Minokichi, lay
awake a long time, listening to the awful wind, and the continual
slashing of the snow against the door. The river was roaring; and the
hut swayed and creaked like a junk at sea. It was a terrible storm; and
the air was every moment becoming colder; and Minokichi shivered under
his rain-coat. But at last, in spite of the cold, he too fell asleep.

He was awakened by a showering of snow in his face. The door of the hut
had been forced open; and, by the snow-light (_yuki-akari_), he saw a
woman in the room,—a woman all in white. She was bending above Mosaku,
and blowing her breath upon him;—and her breath was like a bright white
smoke. Almost in the same moment she turned to Minokichi, and stooped
over him. He tried to cry out, but found that he could not utter any
sound. The white woman bent down over him, lower and lower, until her
face almost touched him; and he saw that she was very beautiful,—though
her eyes made him afraid. For a little time she continued to look at
him;—then she smiled, and she whispered:—“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!”

[Illustration] BLOWING HER BREATH UPON HIM

With these words, she turned from him, and passed through the doorway.
Then he found himself able to move; and he sprang up, and looked out.
But the woman was nowhere to be seen; and the snow was driving
furiously into the hut. Minokichi closed the door, and secured it by
fixing several billets of wood against it. He wondered if the wind had
blown it open;—he thought that he might have been only dreaming, and
might have mistaken the gleam of the snow-light in the doorway for the
figure of a white woman: but he could not be sure. He called to Mosaku,
and was frightened because the old man did not answer. He put out his
hand in the dark, and touched Mosaku’s face, and found that it was ice!
Mosaku was stark and dead...

By dawn the storm was over; and when the ferryman returned to his
station, a little after sunrise, he found Minokichi lying senseless
beside the frozen body of Mosaku. Minokichi was promptly cared for, and
soon came to himself; but he remained a long time ill from the effects
of the cold of that terrible night. He had been greatly frightened also
by the old man’s death; but he said nothing about the vision of the
woman in white. As soon as he got well again, he returned to his
calling,—going alone every morning to the forest, and coming back at
nightfall with his bundles of wood, which his mother helped him to
sell.

One evening, in the winter of the following year, as he was on his way
home, he overtook a girl who happened to be traveling by the same road.
She was a tall, slim girl, very good-looking; and she answered
Minokichi’s greeting in a voice as pleasant to the ear as the voice of
a song-bird. Then he walked beside her; and they began to talk. The
girl said that her name was O-Yuki;[2] that she had lately lost both of
her parents; and that she was going to Yedo (2), where she happened to
have some poor relations, who might help her to find a situation as a
servant. Minokichi soon felt charmed by this strange girl; and the more
that he looked at her, the handsomer she appeared to be. He asked her
whether she was yet betrothed; and she answered, laughingly, that she
was free. Then, in her turn, she asked Minokichi whether he was
married, or pledged to marry; and he told her that, although he had
only a widowed mother to support, the question of an “honorable
daughter-in-law” had not yet been considered, as he was very young...
After these confidences, they walked on for a long while without
speaking; but, as the proverb declares, _Ki ga aréba, mé mo kuchi hodo
ni mono wo iu:_ “When the wish is there, the eyes can say as much as
the mouth.” By the time they reached the village, they had become very
much pleased with each other; and then Minokichi asked O-Yuki to rest
awhile at his house. After some shy hesitation, she went there with
him; and his mother made her welcome, and prepared a warm meal for her.
O-Yuki behaved so nicely that Minokichi’s mother took a sudden fancy to
her, and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yedo. And the natural
end of the matter was that Yuki never went to Yedo at all. She remained
in the house, as an “honorable daughter-in-law.”

O-Yuki proved a very good daughter-in-law. When Minokichi’s mother came
to die,—some five years later,—her last words were words of affection
and praise for the wife of her son. And O-Yuki bore Minokichi ten
children, boys and girls,—handsome children all of them, and very fair
of skin.

The country-folk thought O-Yuki a wonderful person, by nature different
from themselves. Most of the peasant-women age early; but O-Yuki, even
after having become the mother of ten children, looked as young and
fresh as on the day when she had first come to the village.

One night, after the children had gone to sleep, O-Yuki was sewing by
the light of a paper lamp; and Minokichi, watching her, said:—

“To see you sewing there, with the light on your face, makes me think
of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen. I then
saw somebody as beautiful and white as you are now—indeed, she was very
like you.”...

Without lifting her eyes from her work, O-Yuki responded:—

“Tell me about her... Where did you see her?”

Then Minokichi told her about the terrible night in the ferryman’s
hut,—and about the White Woman that had stooped above him, smiling and
whispering,—and about the silent death of old Mosaku. And he said:—

“Asleep or awake, that was the only time that I saw a being as
beautiful as you. Of course, she was not a human being; and I was
afraid of her,—very much afraid,—but she was so white!... Indeed, I
have never been sure whether it was a dream that I saw, or the Woman of
the Snow.”...

O-Yuki flung down her sewing, and arose, and bowed above Minokichi
where he sat, and shrieked into his face:—

“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!”...

Even as she screamed, her voice became thin, like a crying of
wind;—then she melted into a bright white mist that spired to the
roof-beams, and shuddered away through the smoke-hole.... Never again
was she seen.