The Snow Woman Let Him Go, on Condition He Never Told Anyone

The story of the Snow Woman, in its most famous version, is an old Japanese folk tale later written down by a foreigner named Lafcadio Hearn. He said he heard it from a farmer in Chōfu, west of Tokyo, who said he heard it from an old man when he was young.

Two woodcutters, the old one named Mosaku and the young one Minokichi, went into the mountains to cut firewood and were trapped by a blizzard in a small hut. In the middle of the night, the young Minokichi woke up and saw a woman in white bending over Mosaku, blowing on him. Mosaku froze instantly, a layer of white frost forming on his lips. The woman turned to him and said: You are young, so I spare you, but you must not tell anyone what you saw tonight, or I will kill you.

A year later, Minokichi met a girl named Yuki on the road, they married, and had ten children. Yuki did not age, and all ten children were handsome.

One evening, as Minokichi watched his wife sewing by the lamp, he suddenly spoke of that winter from years ago, saying there was a woman who looked exactly like her. Yuki put down her needlework and said: That person was me.

She spared him for the sake of the children, telling him he must treat them well, or she would not let him off. Saying this, she turned into a white mist and flew out through the roof's smoke vent, never to return.

Other places in Japan also have legends of the Snow Woman: some say she is a woman who froze to death in a heavy snow, some say she is a mountain god, and in some versions she holds a baby and asks passersby to hold it, growing heavier and heavier until the person can no longer stand. But Minokichi's version is the most widespread: because what is most frightening in it is not the Snow Woman, but a person, on the safest night, finally unable to hold back and speaking it out.

#Ghosts #网络转载 #日本怪谈