Ubume
Encyclopedia
Ubume, a Japanese
yōkai
, appears in folk stories and literature as an old woman or Crone
, with a child in her arms, imploring the passerby to hold her infant, only to then disappear. As legend has it, the weight of the child increases by degrees,until the bewitched “child” is revealed to be nothing more than a huge rock or boulder. The first version of this sort of tale was related by Urabe Suyetake, servant of Raiko.
folklore
the term is now applied to the ghost of a woman who had died in childbirth, or ‘‘birthing woman ghost.’’
Typically, the Ubume asks a passerby to hold her child for just a moment and disappears when her victim takes the swaddled baby. The baby then becomes increasingly heavy until it is impossible to hold. It is then revealed not to be a human child at all, but a boulder or a stone image of Jizo.
Many scholars have associated the Ubume with the legend of the hitobashira, where a sacrificial mother and child "are buried under one of the supporting pillars of a new bridge."
The Shoshin’in Temple, according to scholars, is where local women come to pray to conceive a child or to have a successful pregnancy. According to Stone and Walter (2008), the origins of the temple’s legend, set in the mid-sixteenth century, concern:
The early seventeenth-century tale collection Konjaku hyaku monogatari hyoban says of the Ubume:
Natsuhiko Kyogoku’s best-selling detective novel, Ubume no natsu, uses the Ubume legend as its central motif, creating something of an Ubume 'craze at the time of its publication and was made into a major motion picture in 2005.
-era artists produced many images of Ubume, usually represented as "naked from the waist up, wearing a red skirt and carrying a small baby."
Other illustrations of Ubume are from Toriyama Sekien
’s late eighteenth-century encyclopedia of ghosts, goblins and ghouls, Hyakki yagyo.
Kyogoku, Natsuhiko. Ubume no natsu. Tokyo: Kodansha. (1994)
Wakita, Haruko. Women in medieval Japan: motherhood, household management and sexuality. Monash Asia Institute. (2006)
Japanese
Japanese refers to anything that originates in Japan, an island country in East Asia. Used as a noun, it may also refer to:* Foreign-born Japanese, naturalized citizens of Japan...
yōkai
Yōkai
are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for "otherworldly" and "weird". Yōkai range eclectically from the malevolent to the mischievous, or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them...
, appears in folk stories and literature as an old woman or Crone
Crone
The crone is a stock character in folklore and fairy tale, an old woman who is usually disagreeable, malicious, or sinister in manner, often with magical or supernatural associations that can make her either helpful or obstructing. She is marginalized by her exclusion from the reproductive cycle,...
, with a child in her arms, imploring the passerby to hold her infant, only to then disappear. As legend has it, the weight of the child increases by degrees,until the bewitched “child” is revealed to be nothing more than a huge rock or boulder. The first version of this sort of tale was related by Urabe Suyetake, servant of Raiko.
Ubume in Folklore
Originally the name for a kind of small sea fish, in JapaneseJapanese
Japanese refers to anything that originates in Japan, an island country in East Asia. Used as a noun, it may also refer to:* Foreign-born Japanese, naturalized citizens of Japan...
folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
the term is now applied to the ghost of a woman who had died in childbirth, or ‘‘birthing woman ghost.’’
Typically, the Ubume asks a passerby to hold her child for just a moment and disappears when her victim takes the swaddled baby. The baby then becomes increasingly heavy until it is impossible to hold. It is then revealed not to be a human child at all, but a boulder or a stone image of Jizo.
Many scholars have associated the Ubume with the legend of the hitobashira, where a sacrificial mother and child "are buried under one of the supporting pillars of a new bridge."
The Shoshin’in Temple, according to scholars, is where local women come to pray to conceive a child or to have a successful pregnancy. According to Stone and Walter (2008), the origins of the temple’s legend, set in the mid-sixteenth century, concern:
- ... a modern statue of Ubume, displayed once a year in July. At this festival, candy that has been offered to the image is distributed, and women pray for safe delivery and for abundant milk. The statue, which is clothed in white robes, has only a head, torso, and arms; it has no lower half.
Ubume in Literature
Stories about Ubumue have been told in Japan since at least the twelfth century.The early seventeenth-century tale collection Konjaku hyaku monogatari hyoban says of the Ubume:
- When a woman loses her life in childbirth, her spiritual attachment (shu¯ jaku) itself becomes this ghost. In form, it is soaked in blood from the waist down and wanders about crying, ‘Be born! Be born!’ (obareu, obareu).
Natsuhiko Kyogoku’s best-selling detective novel, Ubume no natsu, uses the Ubume legend as its central motif, creating something of an Ubume 'craze at the time of its publication and was made into a major motion picture in 2005.
Ubume in Art
TokugawaTokugawa
Tokugawa may refer to:*Tokugawa clan, a powerful family of Japan**Tokugawa Ieyasu, the most notable member of the Tokugawa clan and founder of its shogunate*Tokugawa shogunate, a feudal regime of Japan...
-era artists produced many images of Ubume, usually represented as "naked from the waist up, wearing a red skirt and carrying a small baby."
Other illustrations of Ubume are from Toriyama Sekien
Toriyama Sekien
thumb|200px| was an 18th century scholar and ukiyo-e artist of Japanese folklore. He was the teacher of Utamaro and, before taking up printmaking, a painter of the Kanō school. Toriyama is most famous for his attempt to catalogue all species of yōkai in the Hyakki Yakō series.-References:...
’s late eighteenth-century encyclopedia of ghosts, goblins and ghouls, Hyakki yagyo.
Suggested Reading
Iwasaka, Michiko and Barre Toelken. Ghosts And The Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death Legends.(1994)Kyogoku, Natsuhiko. Ubume no natsu. Tokyo: Kodansha. (1994)
Wakita, Haruko. Women in medieval Japan: motherhood, household management and sexuality. Monash Asia Institute. (2006)