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Notes on Snowdrop
By: Michelle Rogers
A must play for those who like romance or tales based off the Yuki Onna legends. The following write-up is based on
my playing through Shizuka's storyline, the love of the snow maiden. There will be spoilers contained within.
The Story
Minoru is a hopeless romantic at heart. Like most winters he finds himself on vacation at a ski lodge owned by Kasumi and her
husband. His younger sister, Honami, and two neighbors, Keika and Kyoka, go up with him. On the way to the lodge Keika leads the
group into the woods to show them a snow drop flower she'd seen the winter before. For Minoru this unlocks the first
of a series of memories that linger from his past. For the others the hike serves as an annoyance because they're in the middle
of a blizzard. But somehow they find themselves led out of it to safety by a shadow Kyoka thinks she sees. It leads them to Kasumi's lodge and then
disappears as if it never existed. Kyoka and the others wonder if it was even an aura at all.
The days pass and while there he becomes embroiled in the legend of the Snow
Lady and comes to learn the maid employed by Kasumi isn't who she appears to be. She is in fact the woman of the legend,
and everyone but he knew this about her. Not only that but memories of his past plague him (a past entwined with Shizuka), and
his childhood friend Kyoka has fallen in love with him. He must ultimately choose if his heart lies with her or
the woman of the fairy tale that has been longing to see him again.
Themes & Symbols
From Japanese legend. "Snow-women are spirits of people who have died in the snow. They have no feet, for they float in the air like a freezing vapour. They are greatly feared, for they can kill people with their icy breath. A snow-woman can blow open the door of an isolated hut and lie with a lonely traveller sleeping there. In her embrace he will freeze to death" (Knappert, 270-271).
The Lady of the Snow, Yuki-Onna, from Japanese legend. Yuki-Onna is supposed to represent Death, and "her ice-cold lips draw forth the life-blood of her unfortunate victims" (Davis, 149). From Seki, "The snow woman is generally pictured as though her only visible parts aer long hair, facial features, and pubic hair. The remainder of her body blends with the whiteness of the snow until the time she takes on complete human form to live with mortals" (81).
There is a fairy tale about a young apprentice named Minokichi who lived with his master, until one night a woman in white came to them and froze his master but leaving the young man on account of his youth and beauty. She vanished but told him if he spoke of that night to anyone, she would kill him. The next winter, he met a girl named Yuki and they married. Their life was a happy one and she bore him ten children. One night, by lamplight, he noticed her face reminded him of the woman he'd met long ago. When he told her this, she revealed it was she, Yuki-Onna, that night and that by breaking his promise she would have killed him but for their sleeping children. Before vanishing, she told him that if ever she heard their children were not treated well, she would return to kill him when the snow began to fall.
The above is one of the more popular versions of the tale of the snow wife. But there is another related in Seki's edition of Folktales of Japan. A young man opened his door one night to find a beautiful woman crumpled before his doorstep, taken by her beauty he takes her for his wife. Throughout the winter she was healthy and strong, and the couple quite happy, but with the approach of spring, he noticed she grew thinner and she began to weaken. Finally, one night he went to the kitchen and found only his wife's kimono lying in a pool of water. (pages 81-82)
Kasumi during one of her ghost story telling sessions in the game, adds another variation to the legend,
she says: "And so the Snow Lady couldn't forget the living warmth of men - night after night she wandered the town,
enslaving the men who fell under her spell and freezing them into ice."
Shizuka of course is a much kinder woman than Kasumi's tale would imply, though the curse on her is indeed real.
Shizuka we learn is the spirit of the white flower. She'd been alone under the snow and in the darkness until Minoru took care of her.
It was his kindness to her as the flower that made her fall in love with him. Shizuka during the course of the game
is revealed to be a spirit of many things. The snow drop flower, the lady of snow herself, and to the villagers, the mountain god. In
fact she is honored in the Snow Festival. She is both a protectress of those lost in the snow and mountains, but she is also
known as the mountain god as a destructive spirit.
The snow itself is a reflection of Shizuka. It's an extension of her heart. She is both the guardian of the winter
but it also is her sadness. Snow in similar tales, especially ones of snow women, such as the manga Shirahime Shou or
the TV series of Vampire Princess Miyu portray the underlying sadness of loneliness of winter. The snowdrifts of white that seem to
go on endlessly over the mountains. The snow that covers a solitary snow drop flower in darkness. These images reflect the sadness within Shizuka. We should also note
that while Shizuka is female and nature oftentimes feminine (earth and nature goddesses for example), the weather reflects her mind and heart
in subtle ways such as the blizzard at the story's beginning (perhaps she'd been crying) and the sudden clearing of the storm soon after the group visits the
flower (perhaps merely purposeful now that they are at the lodge, or perhaps it is her happiness at their and Minoru's coming).
Her curse is that though she loves, in the end, she'd freeze Minoru to death if she embraced him. This of course goes back into
portrayals such as the above of the Snow Woman. To get around this she possesses the women around Minoru one by one in hopes of
feeling his warmth through one of them. To possess someone she uses a kind of sexual magic to release emotions and fuse her spirit with that of
the woman she is with. More on the background of this kind of magic can be found on the page on Legend of Fairies. Once done, her spirit
within another body tries to seduce him.
But Minoru ultimately sees through her deceptions, and seeks out the true form of Shizuka. She appears before him
in her white robes and floating ribbons, long blue hair flowing about her. Her only wish is to love and hold him, but
it would mean his death. Yet, the warmth of his body as they make love is enough afterall, and it is the love she longed for that thaws her frozen
heart and makes her wish possible. This union leads into the symbol of the snow drop, Shizuka's namesake.
For those who've played Giniro or experienced similar tales, water many times might be given a feminine association as it is here. The snow is the dual side with spring,
the act of love between Shizuka and Minoru the melting of snow into the warmth of spring. The snow drop is a flower that
represents this. It is the flower that survives the snow and darkness to welcome in the spring, and in this case, warmth and love.
At the game's end, Minoru says of the snow drop flowers he is growing for Shizuka: "It blooms when the snow melts to let us
know spring has arrived... A legend says that a snowflake with the touch of an angel's breath fell down to the
Earth and became this flower... In the Language of Flowers it means 'First Love' and 'I'll come back again.'" On one level
it is a symbol of their love for each other. On another, it is a symbol of Shizuka herself. Flowers often are symbols of growth, whether it is the blooming into a young woman
or a flower to show femininity or the girl herself throughout the story. Shizuka blooms by the story's end. She is the woman she wanted to be, and
she is loved. Giniro is another game which continually uses the flower itself to represent a young woman within the story.
One last little observation. I noticed while following the storyline between Shizuka and Minoru that I couldn't
help but be reminded of the parallel to Kakeru's character in the second Sailor Moon movie. Both are young men who are idealists and
romantics through and through. And both are in love with women of fairy tales (Kakeru with Kaguya-hime and Minoru with the Snow Maiden), and
both have a woman in their loves who is more of a realist yet loves them very much and balances the two sides of romantic and idealist when
they are a couple. The yuki onna in both has a potential for destruction, but in the storyline I followed for this game,
the romantic nature and ideal is ultimately one that brings great reward and balance to the lives of those involved.
Yuki Onna references from:
Folktales of Japan edited by Keigo Seki
Myths and Legends of Japan by F. Hadland Davis
Pacific Mythology: An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend by Jan Knappert
This essay is copyright of Michelle Rogers 2004.