Fukuiふくい

The Kuzuryu Ōgami of Mount Togakushi is venerated as a water deity pacified through subjugation and transformed into a benevolent god. Medieval accounts center on a tale of pacification and sanctification by a figure known as Gakumon, after which the deity became revered as Kuzuryu Gongen, a principal icon for rainmaking, integrated into the rites of shrine attendants and Shugendō practitioners. It is said to favor pears as offerings, and from the early modern period was believed to cure toothache and bless marriages. Its representations vary by era—divine statue, serpent form, or dragon form—and it is linked to rock grottoes, springs, and ravines. As a guardian of local water sources and a symbol of agricultural stability, its tempestuous aspects are understood to be soothed through requiem rites and festivals. Even without mixing with Echizen traditions of the Black and White Dragons, it shares the essential functions of a water god, governing rain, river levels, and community livelihood.

As a "white apparition," the Yuki-onna is told of as a white figure that suddenly stands in one's path on a blizzard night, leaving no footprints. Before she draws near, the air first turns cold and one's breath freezes white; then, in the glow of the snow, a woman with a long trailing hem floats dimly into view. This sense that "the cold announces her before she comes" is the shared core of encounter-tales across the regions. Her face alone is translucently pale, her eyes glint from within, and she either gives no answer when addressed or asks one's name in a low voice. In many versions the taboo runs thus: answer her question and your life-force is drained; stay silent and you are spared. The tale of Minokichi and O-Yuki that Lafcadio Hearn set down in Kwaidan conveys this white-apparition image most vividly. Having frozen the old woodcutter Mosaku to death in a storm-bound hut, the snow woman leaves the young Minokichi with a single command: tell no one what you have seen tonight. Later Minokichi weds a traveling woman named O-Yuki, fathers children, and lives happily — until one snowy night, watching his wife's pale profile as she sews by lamplight, he sees in her the face of the snow woman of long ago and lets the words slip. O-Yuki reveals herself, declares that she spares him only for the love of their children, and vanishes through the smoke-hole as a white mist. A bond sealed by a single forbidden word comes undone: the sorrow of parting, and the otherworldly woman who longs for a human, crystallize here. In pictorial tradition she is usually painted as a tall woman in white in pale washes, her outline never drawn too firmly, dissolved into a white scarcely distinguishable from the snow. Her feet are blurred into haze and she casts no shadow, lending the air of something not of this world. Less a spirit who sings and dances than a still apparition who stands without sound and vanishes without sound — that is the true nature of the Yuki-onna as a "white apparition."

Iconographic Disconnect from Western Mermaids. The image of a Ningyo that modern Japanese people envision—a "beautiful female upper body and a fish lower body"—is a product of Western mermaid legends (such as Hans Christian Andersen's *The Little Mermaid*) being imported and taking root from the modern era onward. Prior to this, traditional Japanese Ningyo iconography, as depicted in texts like the *Kaikoku Heidan*, was exceedingly bizarre and grotesque: "a human-like (or monkey-like) face on a scale-covered fish body." The facial features were not necessarily those of a beautiful woman; they were generally depicted as terrifying men, women, young, or old, bearing sharp fangs. The sheer ugliness of this design emphasized the visceral reality of the Ningyo as a "creature from the Other World" and the taboo, grotesque nature of the act of eating its flesh. Biological Models and the Natural History Perspective. The core of Japanese Ningyo folklore is believed to contain no small amount of misidentification of actual biological creatures. For example, a prevalent theory suggests that sirenians like dugongs and manatees, or pinnipeds like sea lions and seals, served as the models for the Umibozu and Ningyo. Additionally, in inland (river or swamp) Ningyo legends, there are cases where the true identity is speculated to have been the Japanese giant salamander. Edo period herbalists (Honzogakusha) meticulously collected and classified records of these unknown marine creatures washing ashore, attempting to re-examine yokai through the lens of "science" (natural history). The Curse of "Eternal Life". The "eternal youth and longevity" brought about by Ningyo meat is a universal human desire, yet in Japanese folklore, it is always depicted as two sides of the same coin alongside "tragedy." As the legend of Yao-bikuni demonstrates, one who obtains eternal youth by eating Ningyo meat must repeatedly watch their beloved family members and husbands age and die, forcing them to experience unbearable loneliness and despair (temporal isolation). The Ningyo is a yokai that acts as a cruel mirror, thrusting the "terror of escaping death" directly in humanity's face.

This version adheres to Toriyama Sekien’s image and brief note, centering on a one-eyed, three-fingered figure rising upper-body first from a muddy paddy. It avoids expanding later folkloric claims and emphasizes allegory. It appears as a voice rebuking impiety and neglect of farming after fields are sold off, standing by the paddy ridge at night and repeating in a low voice, “Return the fields.” Given the scant early modern corroboration, this is a reconstruction mindful that Sekien may have intended wordplay and social satire, without asserting ties to specific places or people. Visual traits include a mud-smeared monk-like upper body, a single eye, a wide mouth, and three-fingered hands.

The Myth of the "Curse" of Immortality. The legend of Yao-bikuni is the most beautiful yet cruelest answer Japanese folklore offers to humanity's universal "fear of aging" and "thirst for eternal life." At first glance, immortality seems like the ultimate blessing, but in this tale, it is explicitly depicted as a "curse." Her tragedy is not that she cannot die, but that "everyone other than herself will inevitably die." Left behind in the world as a beautiful teenage girl while watching her beloved ones grow senile and pass away, this overwhelming temporal isolation inflicted upon her an agony worse than death. Her nationwide pilgrimages to perform good deeds (building infrastructure and planting trees) can be interpreted not merely as acts of compassion, but as an agonizing journey of atonement to find some meaning in an endless existence and to sublimate her karma. Wakasa's Kuin-ji Temple and the Concept of "Nyujo". The cave where she is said to have spent her final moments (Yaohime-gu) still remains at Kuin-ji Temple in Obama City, Fukui Prefecture, the terminus of Yao-bikuni's journey. What is particularly noteworthy is that her end is not told as a simple "death (starvation)," but as "Nyujo." Nyujo refers to a high-ranking Buddhist monk entering a deep state of meditation while still alive in order to save sentient beings, becoming an eternal entity (a mummy or Sokushinbutsu). Having been stripped of a physical death by the Ningyo meat, the only way she could "end her existence (or elevate her dimension to something sacred)" was by confining herself to a cave by her own will and renouncing food. The Metaphor of "Yao-bikuni" in Modern Times. In modern subcultures—such as literature, manga, and animation—Yao-bikuni (or her motifs) is an immensely popular subject. Elements like "eternal youth and beauty," "never-ending loneliness," and "the agony of being unable to die" resonate deeply with modern society's fanaticism over anti-aging and the very real social issues of "aging and isolation" in a society with increasing longevity. She is not merely a character from an old folktale, but an eternal heroine who continuously confronts humanity with the ultimate proposition of how we should face time and death.