Yuki-Onna
In a village of Musashi Province, 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 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!"
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;that she had lately
lost both of her parents;and that she was going to Yedo,
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 pledge 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 areba,
me 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 theSnow."...
