Yuki-onna are created when someone dies in the snow and can be found wherever there is snow. They look like beautiful women with long black hair and blue lips. Their skin is so pale that it helps them blend into snowy landscapes. Yuki-onna don't leave footprints and can turn into a cloud of mist or snow if they are threatened.
Although ideas about how they do so vary, Yuki-onna are often depicted killing people in the snow. Some say that they use their icy breath to make travelers caught in snow storms freeze to death. Others claim that they simply lead travelers astray so that they will die of exposure instead of directly killing them. Touching a Yuki-onna can also be fatal. Yuki-onna can take all of the warmth out of a person's body through direct contact, freezing them to death.
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In order to trick someone and make them touch her, a Yuki-onna will often try to seduce men. She will steal their body heat as soon as they kiss or try to have sex with her. A Yuki-onna can also make herself appear as if she is carrying a baby, freezing people to death when they touch the fake infant. Parents who have lost their children are especially susceptible to this tactic.
Some legends portray Yuki-onna as very aggressive. In these legends, Yuki-onna will use wind to blow open the door to a house and kill the people inside while they are sleeping. However, Yuki-onna are more commonly portrayed as relying on trickery to kill people.
Reasons for Yuki-onna killing people vary. Some say that Yuki-onna are satisfied just by watching someone die. Others claim that Yuki-onna feed off of people's blood or life force like vampires. However, although they were almost exclusively portrayed as malevolent in the past, modern depictions of Yuki-onna sometimes give them a softer side. Sometimes, they will lead people out of blizzards or just leave them alone instead of killing them. They have even been portrayed marrying humans and having children with them, although these marriages frequently end badly.
If a human discovers that his wife is a Yuki-onna and tells another human about her true nature, his wife must leave him. Since Yuki-onna do not age, it is inevitable for their husbands to discover what they truly are. In most cases, they fail to keep their wife's secret, unfortunately forcing them to leave even though these marriages are usually quite happy.
FUN FACT: There is a story of a man who accidentally killed his Yuki-onna wife. Unaware that she was a Yuki-onna, he told her to go bathe in an onsen (a hot spring in Japan used for public bathing). The Yuki-onna was very reluctant to go, but her husband made her go to the onsen anyway. Nothing was left of the Yuki-onna afterward except for thin icicles floating in the water.
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Examples in various media:
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Unnamed Yuki-onna (InuYasha)
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Reiha (Vampire Princess Miyu)
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Sode no Shirayuki (Bleach) Her name means "snow-white sleeve".
