雪子について (About Yukiko)
Character Information
Character Name: Yukiko Honjo* (*later adopted when surnames became popular for peasants in Japan during the Meiji Era)
Nicknames/Aliases: The Yuki Onna (Snow Woman)
Gender: Female
Race: Asian (Japanese)
Actual Character Age: About 1100 but looks to be in her 20's
DOB: 8th century AD (sometime between the Engi [901 AD] and Encho [923 AD] of the Heian period)
Physical Description:
Yukiko is very much the image of the ideal woman of Japan during ancient times. When one looks at her they can’t help but notice she looks like most of the women drawn on wood blocks and scroll paintings. She is tall and very slender with long black hair and abnormally pale skin. Long, graceful arms were made for playing instruments though Yukiko has no musical ability. Long legs were made for dancing but Yukiko has two left feet. Although she looks like her mother, the Yuki Onna, her father’s human blood has clearly canceled out the skills of the legendary snow woman.
Since Yukiko has had to move around a lot in the past 1100 years, she usually adapts her clothing style to the region and time she is living in. She is infinitely glad that the heavy kimono of the Heian period went out of style and that polyester disco suits are dead. Usually she can be seen wearing comfortable shorts and tank tops, having a distaste for anything overly feminine and formal.
She never wears makeup (not after having to endure years of using swallow excretions as face powder) not even to work or parties. Yukiko is rather proud of her long, shiny hair and as such likes to try different hair styles (but never anything too poofy or fancy- those Heian/Geisha hairstyles still haunt her in her dreams).
Distinguishing marks:
Her pale skin is beautiful, ethereal even but highly unnatural looking. Most Westerners would assume that she uses a lot of cover up; most Japanese assume that she has good genes and stays out of the sun.
PB: Mika Nakashima
Birth Location: Musashi Province (today comprises Tokyo prefecture, most of Saitama Prefecture and part of Kanagawa Prefecture, mainly Kawasaki and Yokohama)
Personality:
Yukiko is a no nonsense woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone, especially men. However, it is rare that she would actually raise her voice against an opponent. She is cool and calculating, preferring psychological warfare over physical attacks. It is hard for her to get close to people, half because she hates men and half because she has to move after a certain number of years so that people don’t get suspicious that she never ages. She does, in fact, age but it’s so much slower than normal people that it’s not very noticeable.
Why does she hate men? Because their carnal desires and testosterone ridden brains cause war, pain and strife. Yukiko has lived through enough wars and famine to know what pain men cause. Her own father ruined her mother’s life by breaking his promise never to talk about the Yuki Onna and because of it, she evaporated and disappeared. Men could not be trusted under any circumstances. She is highly embarrassed of her mother’s reputation of seducing men even if it was just to kill them later.
Her standoffish attitude makes people believed that she is a snob. Because she has lived so long, Yukiko is highly knowledgeable and isn’t afraid to let someone know when they are wrong. She speaks very formally and politely to everyone because although she is fluent in many languages, she spent most of her life in Japan where polite speech and manner is highly regarded. Even her enemies are called “Mr.” and “Ms.”. Yukiko will rarely, if ever, call someone by their first name because it signifies closeness in Japan.
Yukiko has inherited her mother’s love for children and distaste for men. She has worked on many charities (even in Africa despite it being blazing hot there) and wants to be a psychologist for the next twenty or so years until she has to move again.
Personal Background:
Once upon a time there was an old woodcutter named Mosaku and his apprentice, a boy of eighteen, named Minokichi. When they were on their way home from the forest, a great snowstorm overtook them. They found a hut and unable to make fire, laid in the dark, cold hut under a straw mat and waited for the storm to pass.
Mosaku easily slept but Minokichi was kept awake by the terrible wind and chill. A beautiful woman wearing a white kimono appeared in front of him after forcing her way into the hut. She leaned over him and even though he tried to cry out, he could not make a sound. For a moment she was silent but then told him that although she had intended to treat him like all the other men (meaning that she would kiss him and freeze him to death) she had taken a liking to his beautiful face and would let him live. In exchange, he could not tell anyone about their encounter.
The ghostly woman passed through the door and Minokichi woke with a start, wondering if it had all been a dream. The door was still open but the ghostly woman was no where in sight. When he turned to Mosaku to tell him what had happened, he found the old man cold and dead.
When he arrived home he told no one of the woman he had seen but remained frightened. One day he came across a beautiful girl walking alongside the road named Oyuki and the two quickly fell in love and pledged to marry. Although she had born him ten children (nine boys and one girl), she never aged. She looked as beautiful and young as the moment she had met him.
One night, he saw her sewing by the lamp light and told her that she reminded him of a woman he had seen when he was eighteen, the Yuki Onna. As soon as he told her the full story, Oyuki revealed that she was the snow woman and that she intended to kill him for his betrayal. However, it would leave her children as orphans and instead shrieked that if he ever wronged her children, she would come back and make him pay.
And with that, the Yuki Onna disappeared.
Little Yukiko watched the whole scene from her bedroom, shocked and hurt that her father would betray her mother like this. Men could not be trusted, she decided from then on. Even honorable and hard working men like her father still had evil, deceitful streaks in them. She vowed she would never marry or love a man for fear of disappearing like her mother.
As the years went on, her brothers all got older, went to war and eventually died one by one. By the time her youngest brother died, she had only aged a little bit. The villagers were angry and scared because she was the lone daughter of the feared Yuki Onna and eventually drove her out of the village, for fear that if they killed her she would haunt them. Over time, Yukiko learned that because she was a girl born to the Yuki Onna, she retained some of the powers of the Yuki Onna such as ice manipulation and long life. However, her powers were not nearly as great as her mother’s, probably because her blood was diluted by human blood. That suited Yukiko just fine- she just wanted to live a normal life and pretend, at least for a little while, that she was a normal girl.
For many years Yukiko wandered around Japan from prefecture to prefecture making a living by doing various jobs as the times called for them. She had a short stint as a geisha (which didn’t last because she had zero skill in dancing, tea ceremony, or any of the classical arts but most of all hated performing for men), was an artist’s apprentice, made weapons, sold shoes, worked on farms, and finally traveled the world in the 1600's. Her favorite place to live was in Siberia due to the cold climate but it was basically a waste land so she had to steel her spine and move to warmer climates. For a while she did missionary work in Africa and Latin America before coming to America in the year 1960 to live in Michigan and go to school. Because of advancing technology, she had to be more careful than ever not to let herself get caught for being over a thousand years old.
Once her time was up in Michigan (and having gone through the other cold weather states, including Alaska), she moved to Washington to enjoy the rain if she couldn’t enjoy the snow of middle America. From there she traveled along the west coast, moving from town to town to decide where she wanted to study next and ended up in Oregon. It was a nice state, had bookstores and plenty of coffee and rain but...
... why can’t she leave?
Family: Mother (Oyuki; the original Yuki Onna), Father (Minokichi; wood cutter), nine older brothers. All family members are deceased... or in the Yuki Onna’s case, disappeared.
Weakness: Heat of any sort (though because she is half human she won’t melt or anything- it’s just extremely unpleasant and renders her basically powerless), children, wasabi flavored ice cream
Magical Abilities: Controls, generates, and absorbs ice and snow. Her half breed status makes it so she can’t control any snow, ice or water that is too far a distance from her. She also can’t freeze living things like animals or people (even if she would really, really like to), unlike her mother.
Any Training: Sword training. Before the Meiji restoration banned swords, Yukiko learned swordsmanship from the wife of a great samurai. After swords were banned in Japan, she continued to train in kendo and the like. She has a fondness for shiny, sharp weapons.
Special Skills: Withstanding cold temperatures for long periods of time, making sushi and snow cones, fencing
Job: Graduate student looking to get her PhD in child psychology. More often than not, she works side by side with a child psychologist doing research and case studies. Pat time, she is a ski instructor in the winter and fencing instructor in the summer.
Likes: Snow, ice, the cold, children, The History Channel, weird flavored ice cream, ice skating, skiing, weapons, swords, kendo, fencing
Dislikes: Warmth, heat, most men, spicy food, rudeness, uncomfortable situations, dancing, anime, karaoke, Sanrio
Five Interesting Facts About Your Character:
1) Yukiko will rarely ever wear a sweater, let alone a jacket, even in the dead of winter. She prefers to wear tank tops and thin shirts because she hates warm clothing and sweating.
2) Yukiko doesn’t actually know what her life span is. Her mother was over 10,000 when she disappeared but that was because her father betrayed her. Yukiko lives life as though she could go any day because she actually might.
3) Yukiko hates J-pop, anime, karaoke, and Hello Kitty. They are, in her opinion, the cancers of Japanese society.
4) Yukiko likes to go through history books and correct misleading information. She has, after all, lived through most of the events and seen things first hand.
5) Yukiko owns a Japanese school girl outfit. Why she has it or when she used it is a mystery.