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There lived two woodcutters. Mosaku – an old man, and his apprentice – 18 year old Minokichi. Everyday, they went together to a forest situated five miles from their village. On the way to that forest there was a wide river to cross and a ferry boat. No 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 found that the boatman had gone away, leaving his boat on the other side of the river.

The woodcutters took shelter in the ferryman’s hut, thinking themselves lucky to find any shelter at all.

There wasn’t anyplace in which to make a fire. It was only a two mat hut with a single door but no window. Minokichi fastened the door and they lay down to rest. 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. 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 he saw a woman in his 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 he could not utter any sound. The white woman bent 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 and she smiled and she whispered, “I am tempted 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 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. He wondered if the wind had blown the door open. He thought he might only have been 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 on 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 songbird. And he walked beside her and they began to talk. The girl said that her name was Oyuki. That she had lately lost both of her parents and she was going to Yaedo where she happened to have some poor relations who might help her to find a situation as a servant.

Minokich 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. And in her turn she asked Minokichi whether he was married or pledged to marry and he told her that although he only had a widowed mother to support, the question of an honorable daughter in law had not yet been considered because he was very young.

After these confidences they walked on for a long while without speaking. But, as the proverb declares. 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 Oyuki to rest a while 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.

Oyuki behaved so nicely that Minokichi’s mother took a sudden fancy to her and persuaded her to delay her journey to Yaedo. And the natural end of the matter was that Yuki never went to Yaedo at all. She remained in the house as an honorable daughter in law.

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

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

One night, after the children had gone to sleep, Oyuki was sitting by the light of a paper lamp and Minokichi, watching her, said. “To see you sitting there. The light on your face. Makes me think of a strange thing that happened when I was a lad of eighteen. I then saw someone as beautiful and white as you are now. Indeed she was very like you.

Oyuki 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, whispering. And about the silent death of old Mosaku. And he said. “Asleep or awake, that is the only time 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 I … Indeed, I’ve never been sure whether it was a dream I saw or the woman of the snow.”

Oyuki arose and bowed above Minokichi where he sat and shrieked into his face. “It was I. I. I. I, Yuki it was. 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. Because 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, and she melted into a bright, white mist that spired to the roof beams.

Never again was she seen.

If you should find yourself trapped in a snowstorm, beware the icy kiss of Yuki Onna. The snow witch.

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