'What is her face like?'
'It is all white, white. It is an enormous face. And it is a lonesome face.'
[The word Kinjuro used was samushii. Its common meaning is 'lonesome'; but he used it, I think, in the sense of 'weird.']
'Did you ever see her, Kinjuro?'
'Master, I never saw her. But my father told me that once when he was a child, he wanted to go to a neighbour's house through the snow to play with another little boy; and that on the way he saw a great white Face rise up from the snow and look lonesomely about, so that he cried for fear and ran back. Then his people all went out and looked; but there was only snow; and then they knew that he had seen the Yuki-Onna.'
'And in these days, Kinjuro, do people ever see her?'
'Yes. Those who make the pilgrimage to Yabumura, in the period called Dai-Kan, which is the Time of the Greatest Cold, [2] they sometimes see her.'
'What is there at Yabumura, Kinjuro?'
'There is the Yabu-jinja, which is an ancient and famous temple of Yabu- no-Tenno-San—the God of Colds, Kaze-no-Kami. It is high upon a hill, nearly nine ri from Matsue. And the great matsuri of that temple is held upon the tenth and eleventh days of the Second Month. And on those days strange things may be seen. For one who gets a very bad cold prays to the deity of Yabu-jinja to cure it, and takes a vow to make a pilgrimage naked to the temple at the time of the matsuri.'
'Naked?'