Yuki Onna (Snow Woman) is a pale, spirit-like woman who represents the brutal and cold winter. She is often shown as a pale white woman in a white kimono with blue lips and long black hair. Yuki Onna is often a wrathful specter who leads hikers astray to their deaths in the chilling cold, or freezes the innocent with her ice-cold breath.

However, she isn’t always so antagonistic. One of her most famous legends tells a story of love. Yuki Onna fell in love with a woodcutter during the harsh winter months. She was about to freeze him when she was struck by his beauty. She disappeared into the white landscape, telling him to never speak of what he witnessed or she would return to kill him. Sometime later she turned herself into a corporeal human to be with him, becoming a loving and devoted wife. Years later he related to her the story of when they first met, not realizing that she was the Yuki Onna all along. She showed her true self to him, telling him that she could no longer kill him because of the children they bore together. She vanished, never to return, leaving him to care for their young.