Friday 29 April 2016

Y - Sadako Yamamura & Yuki-onna - Fictional Phantoms #AtoZChallenge 2016


The second to last day of the AtoZChallenge, I hope everyone has been enjoying this years fun. Today, for the letter Y I have two female Japanese fictional phantoms for you. Both have a penchant for killing people, but for differing reasons.

Sadako Yamamura (Ring)

Sadako Yamamura is the ghostly character at the centre of the Ring novels and films.

At one time she was simply a human being who had certain supernatural powers, but in all versions of the story, these powers cause events that least to her being thrown into a well and imprisoned.

In the film Ring she is killed by her own father and thrown into the well. From when she enacts her revenge.

She uses her power of nensha, which allows her to create images on film from her mind, to make a video tape. When viewed the tape will kill the viewer in seven days.

In the films this means her crawling out of the television in all her undead glory to kill those who have viewed her tape. She is a traditional vengeful ghost with dark eyes, long dark hair and white clothing.

The only way to escape death is to copy the tape and show it to another person, thus passing on the curse to them and perpetuating Sadako's revenge.

Yuki-onna (Kwaidan)

A yuki-onna is a woman of the snow - she is a yokai spirit and appears on snowy nights. She wears white (when she wears anything at all), has white, almost translucent skin, long black hair and blue lips. Her eyes are said to strike terror into the hearts of any humans that see her.

The fictional phantom I have chosen today is from the Japanese anthology horror film Kwaidan (ghost stories).

In the story The Woman of the Snow the yuki-onna finds two farmers in a fisherman's hut. She kills one immediately by freezing him to death, but the other, Monokichi, she spares, because he is so young. She leaves him alive, with a warning never to speak of her to anyone or she will return and kill him, to which he agrees.

Minokichi keeps his word and later meets a young woman called Yuki, whom he falls in love with, marries and has children with. They live happily for ten years. Until he finally breaks down and tell her about the strange encounter he had.

Of course Yuki is the yuki-onna and reveals herself, but she refrains from carrying out her threat because of their children. However, she leaves the heartbroken Minokichi with another warning; he must look after them well or she will be back.

So a vengeful ghost climbing out of the TV or a spirit that can freeze the blood in your veins - which would you rather go up against?

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My Other Blogs
I am sharing blogging duties with my sister, Sophie, on two other blogs for the AtoZ as well :

And Sophie also has her own blog in the AtoZ too:

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Other People's Blogs
Don't forget to check out the other participant in this years AtoZChallenge. Click on the image to visit the main site and see the full list.

21 comments:

  1. I remember seeing The Ring and being completely creeped out! So I think that I would choose the one that can freeze the blood in my veins.

    Tracy (Black Boots, Long Legs)

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  2. The Ring seems way to scary for me! (Yet I am intrigued)

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  3. The Ring scared the crap out of me. When she crawled out of that TV, you could hear me screaming from a theater for miles around! ~~~ Thanks for commenting so much at my blog for A to Z!

    Piper

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  4. I'm going with the one climbing out of the TV, maybe I could run away in time. I don't want to be frozen by the other one, that might be harder to get away from

    betty

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  5. The Ring scared the crap out of me, so would take my chances with the other one and hope I got saved!

    Mars xx
    @TrollbeadBlog from
    Curling Stones for Lego People

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  6. The Ring was a cool movie.
    That was nice of Yuki to spare Minokichi... what a twist that he was married to the yuki-onna!

    We're in the homestretch now... Looking forward to what Z holds here tomorrow!

    Michele at Angels Bark

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  7. Gulp. I don't think I want to meet either one. I picked the y word for Japanese ghost for the parallelsanthology.blogspot.com. For my science post at www.tamaranarayan.com I picked the a Japanese landmark. Japan is great for y words.

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  8. The Ring! *shivers* So much about that movie freaked me out.

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  9. I will definitely go with the TV one because I don't have a TV!!!

    @Kathleen01930
    Meet My Imaginary Friends
    #AtoZchallenge

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  10. Unfamiliar with either of these stories. Don't really want to encounter either of them.

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  11. These are some of the most frightening movies. I refuse to watch them, too stressful.

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  12. Once again the Japanese have created some downright ghastly ghosts!

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  13. Ghosts are big on revenge, aren't they? Scary snow ghost.

    Susan Says

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  14. I'd rather not go up either kind of ghost. I'm starting to have trouble falling asleep at night now that I know about all of the possible ghosts and phantoms that might be lurking around :-)

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  15. I think with all Japanese vengeful spirits, it's best to simply not get involved. :)

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  16. Yuki-onna...literally snow-woman. And people really need to just avoid Asian ghosts altogether because it never ends well.

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  17. I was going to write a story with a Yuki Onna, but decided to outline it, and by the time I got done with the outline, I had lost interest in the story because I knew what happened. Which is why I'm a panster.

    ~Ninja Minion Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
    Story Dam
    Patricia Lynne, Indie Author

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  18. Yeah, I don't want to tangle with either of these bad babes. They are both scary. But I'd rather meet up the yuki-onna than sadako.

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  19. Japanese stories tend to be so scary. I remember the hype when the Ring came out. I'd never dare watching it. That image of the girl appearing in the tv, with her face obscured by her hair... no, no...

    @JazzFeathers
    The Old Shelter - Jazz Age Jazz

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  20. Don't choose to watch movies like the Ring, although I liked one called A Chinese Ghost Story, but that wasn't scary in a horrible way.

    https://rolandclarke.com/2016/04/29/y-for-yearling-atozchallenge/

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  21. https://vanpu.blogspot.co.id/2017/12/wake-movie-2018.html

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