Winter Yokai : Yukinba

 

Yukinba - 雪婆 - Snow hag.

Her story is pretty similar to other winter Yokai  stories, except for the fact that some Yokai like the Yuki Onna can show some degree of kindness. The yukinab has no such warmth, she is just bad, she is constantly on the hunt for kids who she then kidnaps and eats.

 

Her name combines the kanji雪 (yuki; snow) + 婆 (ba; hag). Though it's slightly different depending on the region. In Yamagata prefecture she's called the Yukinbanba (雪ばんば) with “banba” being a regional dialect for “hag.”

The similar child eating yokai, the Yukifuriba, has a nicer name but is equally as horrible . 雪降り(yukifuri; falling snow) + 婆 (ba; hag, old woman) or The Old Woman of the Falling Snow.

The Yukinba looks like an actual monster she is just a  giant head hopping on one leg, with a lot sharp,  teeth and grasping clawed hands. 

The Yukifuriba just looks like a normal old woman with pale, white skin and dressed in a thin, white kimono who always carries a red rope. She may possibly even be an elderly version of the  Yuki Onna. 

Tthe Yukinba Origins..

"Once in the dead of winter, a man was walking through a snowy wheat field when he heard a woman's voice calling out to him. As he looked, a one-legged crone with wild hair appeared and tried to attack him. He fled desperately, when the snow cleared, Yukiba disappeared..."

Both the Yukinba and the Yukifuriba are well known child eaters. They hide out in the mountains and call out to children in an old woman’s voice, preying on the trusting nature of the young. They lure the children in , capture and eat them. 

Parents in the colder region like Niigata prefecture  warn their children not to play at nights when the Yukinba and Yukifuriba are hunting.

Yokai in the mountains and winter seem to have a preference for eating kids, the Yamauba mountain witch in another one to be wearying off.  In many areas, the Yukifuriba is considered to be a “snow version” of the Yamauba in the same way that the yeti is basically  a snow version of bigfoot.

There are many winter yokai described as having only  one foot.

Similar to the  Ippon Datra another Yokai that is mostly peaceful except for December 20th of each year, on that day it will kill any human it comes across.

Most of these are snow monsters, like the Yuki Nyudo and the Yukibo. The legend comes from an uneven patter of snow melting. When snow melts in pockets, it looks like something with a single, large leg has been hopping around the forest. In the case of the Yukibo, this happens in tree wells.  people saw these track like marks and imagined a one-legged snow monster roaming the mountains.

 the Yukiba was also affiliated with "small fuzzy winged insects" called "yuki-mushi" or "snowbugs" - its been believed that if they appear during the autumn, a yukinba  attack occur soon.