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Today’s story-teller is poet and cell biologist Kazuhiro Nagata.

Nagata was introducing an episode of him being nearly got lost in the mountain in the previous column. This is the continuation of the story.

In the snowstorm, 4 men including Nagata were sitting in the tent, waiting for the weather to improve.

They had enough food and fuel, so they knew they were going to be OK. However, the tent was too small for 4 people. They were crammed in the tent.

Once on the first night after they got caught in the snowstorm, they once flew out of the tent at once.

They nearly broke through the tent. The reason was that they could not breathe in the tent.

Yes, they were becoming oxygen-deprived.

He was relieved after he took fresh air. Then he went out of the tent alone to get a wash.

When he looked out over the cliff about 10 meters ahead of him, he noticed a woman in white standing. He was half asleep, but it made him wide awake.

He was completely conscious. It was a woman. It scared devil out of him.

He says, “I could hear her screaming in the storm. She was wriggling her upper and lower body. It looked like she was trying to move towards me.”

He looks back on the time and says that it looked as if she was luring him so he nearly got drawn to her.

Actually, it was just snow in the storm was making the form of a woman. But to him, it looked like a woman in kimono luring him.

If he did get drawn to the illusion, he would had been fallen off the cliff…

It reminded him of “Yuki-onna” and he felt like he saw an actual ghost.

He still remembers the figure clearly. It was not a surprise even if he had been drawn to it.

So Nagata understands that the legend of Yuki-onna still exists in some regions in Japan.

The NIKKEI 04/05/2010 by Kazuhiro Nagata (poet and cell biologist)

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