The snow woman: a figure in white seen in deep snow, usually at a distance and usually without consequence. The oldest sustained discussion of her, printed in 1686, is a sceptical one — the writer reports that he cannot find the word in any older book of Japan or China, then concedes that deep snow might well produce such a thing. The story English readers know, in which she spares a woodcutter and marries him, comes from Lafcadio Hearn in 1904; versions matching it were collected in the villages from the 1930s onward.