The Snow Woman (Yuki Onna)

The Snow Woman (Yuki Onna) is a print associated with Uemura Shoen and dated 1922, drawing its subject from one of the most haunting figures of Japanese folklore. Born in Kyoto in 1875, Shoen was the leading [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) painter of her generation, trained in Kyoto in Maruyama-Shijo and Kano traditions under Suzuki Shonen, Kono Bairei, and Takeuchi Seiho, and recipient of the Order of Culture in 1948, the first woman painter so honored. Yuki Onna, the snow woman, is a yokai spirit said to appear in mountain snowstorms in the figure of a beautiful, deathly pale young woman, sometimes leading travelers to freeze and sometimes sparing them under conditions of secrecy. The motif has long furnished subjects to Japanese painting, theater, and literature, and Shoen's interpretation belongs to a wider Taisho-era interest in supernatural female protagonists handled with painterly refinement rather than theatrical horror. Within Shoen's oeuvre, The Snow Woman occupies a distinguished place; her painting of the subject from the early 1920s is among her best-known supernatural figures, and a print bearing this title is likely to derive from that painting design. The composition typically presents a tall standing female figure swathed in pale robes, the cold radiance of snow handled in the muted color sense for which the artist became famous, with the gaze and posture concentrating the figure's poised threat. The print is documented through the Artsy listing on the secondary market (https://www.artsy.net/artwork/uemura-shoen-the-snow-woman-yuki-onna), which preserves a record of the design under Shoen's name.