山姫
やまひめ

Translation: mountain princess
Alternate names: yama onna (mountain woman), niiyomejo (newlywed bride)
Habitat: mountains
Diet: human blood

Appearance: Yamahime are yōkai women who live deep in the mountains all across Japan. Although their appearance varies from account to account, they usually take the form of beautiful, long-haired, fair-skinned young women. They usually appear half-naked in tattered rags or in clothing woven from grass or bark, but sometimes they wear twelve-layered kimono.

Behavior: Descriptions of what yamahime do are as varied as the places that they appear. What is agreed upon is that they live deep in the mountains, far from human settlements. They will eat raw frogs and snakes, but they prefer to feed upon human blood. Yamahime have beautiful singing voices, and they love to laugh; however, those who hear their laughter will die or be driven mad by it.

Interactions: Yamahime and attack people, especially woodcutters, who wander into their vicinity. They do so by laughing, driving their victims mad and then draining their blood. Occasionally they drain life energy through other means, such as sex. Escape from a yamahime is rare; even those who manage to run away from it often die from fever several days later.

Origin: Yamahime tales are found all over the country, especially in Tōhoku, Shikoku, Kyūshū, and Okayama Prefecture. They and similar strange mountain people (such as yamauba and yamaotoko) appear in numerous Edo period and earlier ghost story collections.

Legends: A yamahime is said to haunt the a mountain road between Tomochi and Shiiba in Kumamoto Prefecture. One time, a woman who was traveling this road encountered a yamahime with tangled hair so long that it touched the ground. The yamahime laughed at the woman, and the woman screamed so loudly that the yamahime ran off. However, her blood had already been drained when the yamahime laughed at her, and she died immediately.

In the village of Yoshida on Yakushima, eighteen young men climbed to the top of the mountain to make an offering of the year’s first harvest to the gods. The sun set before they reached the top, so they decided to spend the night in a mountain hut. Early the next morning, before sunrise, one of the young men woke up to cook rice for the group. He saw a strange woman appear and straddle the men one-by-one as they slept. The cook hid in the shadows. Before long, all of the young men except for the cook were dead, their blood drained away.

In Higashiusuki, Miyazaki Prefecture, a hunter was aiming at a monkey when he suddenly felt pity for the animal and lowered his gun. The monkey approached the hunter and placed a slug in his hand. Later, the hunter encountered a yamahime, but she did not attack him and he was able to escape. This was because yamahime hate slugs.