ICICLE WOMAN OF JAPANESE FOLKLORE~
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| ICICLE WOMAN |
Good evening my dearest friends&followers and welcome to my
humble blog once again. I thought since you all enjoyed the legend of the Sandman and many of my other Urban legends I would put a few more in for the last month of the coming new year. I was watching T.V. today with my beloved husband and they were talking about some of the Japanese folklore and how some are true and some or just folklore. For me, I really don't know. However, I find them very interesting. The Icicle Woman is called the Tsurara Onna.
It is said that the Japanese Icicle woman could be either naughty or nice? Loving or Lethal? in the Japanese Folklore. If these stories are true, the story of the Icicle woman/Tsurara Onna is a warning to the men of Japan if you fashion a woman out of an icicle, even when yu pour your entire heart into it, don't be surprised if she turns out to be a cold-blooded soul.
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ICICLE WOMAN
IN HER BEAUTIFUL FORM |
First I should explain what the Icicle woman of the Japanese folklore does or mean? In all the Tsurara Onna tales/Icicle Woman will start out the same way---a lonely man will gaze out of his window during the cold snowy winter, and will marvel at the beauty of an icicle hanging from his eaves of his home. As he stares deeply into the crystal-like structure, he wishes he could meet a beautiful woman just like the Icicle, to ease the pains of his loneliness. Well, just like magick a woman appears fitting his extra description the very next day. The woman appears at the lonely man's door seeking refuge from a massive and sudden snow storm. Well, as the tale goes the lonely man lets the beautiful woman in his home not knowing what is in store for him & they fall in love. The woman decides to never leave, and the two become husband and wife. In old ancient Japan, no ceremony was necessary. So they decided to marry.
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| ICICLE WOMAN ON THE MOUNTAIN |
Well, life was good---as least for a little while. The man's new wife was quite attentive, very loving & everything he could ever hope for.However, after a while things did go wrong, because there is rarely a Happily ever after in Japanese Folklore. In Japanese folklore when you are dealing with snow monsters it never ends nice or happy. There are two different versions of this tale it just depends on which regions of Japan you happen to live.
The first version of Icicle Woman Folktale~
It seems there was one thing that worried the man about his wife, he couldn't help notice that his new bride never bathes, even on the most chilly of nights. The man started to worry about her health---surely she will get sick if she doesn't warm herself in a warm bath? Not to mention cleanliness. Over the years, he tries to entice her to use the bath & he also assured her she should feel shy or ashamed.
Well, after much talk, his wife then demurs, but eventually she can no longer refuse her husband.
After he prepares a nice warming bathe for her, he keeps himself busy around the house so she can enjoy a nice good soak. Well, hours & hours pass & the man becomes worried about his wife. He thinks perhaps she has fallen asleep in the bath? So he goes into the back of the house to check on her & finds the tub to be empty, with only frozen shards of shattered icicles laying around the perimeter of the bath. These too slowly had melt away.
[Some say what had happened was this; the woman never went into the bath, but into the kitchen to heat up some hot sake for her husband. After a long wait, he goes to the kitchen to find the shattered icicle shards].
Second Version of the Icicle Woman of Japanese
~The Frozen Dagger of Hate~
Well, this version is a bit more harsh yu could say... In this tale as some say 'The Frozen Dagger of Hate'. The Icicle Woman who had become his wife, he doesn't coax his wife into the bath or ask her to retrieve hot sake for him. Instead, what happens they get through winter in perfect bliss. however as spring comes and the temperatures warms, the man has notices his wife is getting anxious for some odd reason. One day the man woke up and his wife was gone, the door of their house was standing wide open and the last of winter winds was blowing through. The husband was heartbroken, but he assumed his wife has left him after using him for shelter through the winter. So he moves on with his life and meets a new woman and falls in love. Come summer, he moves his new wife into his house, They pass the months very happily until winter comes again.
When the world froze over again, the man notices a particularly large Icicle forming from the eaves of his house. Fascinated by it, he goes outside for a better look. Within minutes, he sees his former wife, lived that she has been replaced with another woman.
Inside the home, his new wife hears her husband shriek in agony. She then rushed outside and found him dead, with an large icicle piercing from his head through his eyeball.
Well my dears friends & followers that
are the tale of the Icicle woman of the
Japanese folktale the nice and not so nice version
I hope you enjoy
Happy Holidays
Your friend always
WENDY
