A favorite trick yōkai like to pull is to appear as a helpless mother on the road and beg passing travelers for help. The mother carries a bundled-up baby in her arms, but she needs to put it down to perform some task or another. She asks the traveler to carry her baby briefly for her. After she places the baby in the unsuspecting traveler's arms, it turns out to be a rock. The rock rapidly expands, turning into a massive boulder and crushing the traveler to death. The yōkai can then feast upon the remains.[1]
Yukinko are a northern variation of this trick. They are found only in snowy areas and look like little children made of ice and snow. Yukinko work with yuki onna to trap their victims. The yuki onna poses as a new mother trapped in a snowbank by the side of the road. She begs a passing stranger to hold her baby for a moment so she can free her-self. The baby, of course, is actually a yukinko. Once the yukinko is nestled in the person's arms, it quickly grows larger and heavier. It becomes a mountain of snow, burying the poor human and pinning them down. The victim quickly freezes to death. If the traveler suspects it might be a trap and refuses to carry the mother's baby, the yuki onna and yukinko have a plan B: hey simply push the traveler off a cliff into a snow-filled valley, where they freeze to death.[1]
At some point, on Mount Kaijinzan, a group of yukinko called out to the witcher/ronin Geralt and begged him for help, pretending to be children lost in the blizzard - a predictable tactic. When Geralt investigated, they sprung their trap, fortunately they were no match for him. and he made quick work of them. These yukinko looked different from the traditional depiction. Instead of appearing like human children, they look closer to wild dogs with childlike faces. But their tricky behavior was the same as humanoid yukinko, and they indeed were working in cooperation with a yuki onna.[1]
Notes[]
- The most likely reason yukinko in Ronin resemble dogs compared to their original description of a baby, is because they more resemble the Hounds of the Wild Hunt, due to them also serving the Hyakki Yagyō (Wild Hunt).