Mountain Witches: Yamauba

Mountain Witches

Yamauba

Noriko Tsunoda Reider

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Logan

© 2021 by University Press of Colorado

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ISBN: 978-1-64642-054-4 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-64642-055-1 (ebook)

https://doi.org/10.7330/9781646420551

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Reider, Noriko T., author.

Title: Mountain witches : yamauba / by Noriko Reider.

Description: Logan : Utah State University Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021003990 (print) | LCCN 2021003991 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646420544 (paperback) | ISBN 9781646420551 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Yōkai (Japanese folklore) | Crones—Japan—Folklore. | Witches in literature. | Supernatural in literature. | Folklore—Japan.

Classification: LCC GR340 .R355 2020 (print) | LCC GR340 (ebook) | DDC 398.20952—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003990

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021003991

Cover illustration: Yamauba in Kokkei sharekyōgaen (Cornucopia of humorous pictures) by Maki Bokusen (1775–1824), courtesy of International Research Center for Japanese Studies

To Brent, MaryEllen, and Warwick Reider

My family, my love

Contents

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Yamauba’s Topos, Archetype, and Gender

Yamauba as Yōkai

The Term Yamauba (Yamanba or Yamamba)

Yamauba’s Topos: Mountains Where Eerie Things Happen

Appearance of Yamauba in the Muromachi Period

Appearance of Yamauba and the Role of Yamabushi

Yamabushi Subjugating Yamauba

Yamauba as Archetype

Yamauba’s Gender

Yamauba’s Features

Organization of the Book

1. Man-Eating, Helping, Shape-Shifting Yamauba: Yamauba’s Duality

Yamauba versus Oni/Oni-Women

Cannibalism, the Destructive Side of Yamauba’s Duality, and the Power of Transformation

Kuwazu nyōbō (The Wife Who Does Not Eat)

Ushikata to yamauba (The Ox-Leader and the Yamauba)

Sanmai no ofuda (Three Charms)

Helper and Fortune Giver: The Positive Side of Yamauba’s Duality

Komebuku Awabuku (Komebuku and Awabuku)

Ubakawa (The Old Woman Skin)

Female Cohabitant in Oni’s House

Devouring and Helping Yamauba: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Hanayo no hime (Blossom Princess) of Otogizōshi

The Noh Play Yamanba, a Starting Point

Yamanba’s Oni Image

Yamanba Helping Humans

The Noh Play Kurozuka (Adachigahara): The Crossroads of Yamauba and Oni-Women

Legend of the Oni-Woman of Adachigahara

Kurozuka (Adachigahara), Oni, and Women

Two Sides of the Oni-Woman

Yamanba in Kurozuka

Concluding Remarks

2. Mother Yamauba and Weaving: Childbirth and Bloodsucking, Spinning and Spiders

Yamauba Worship

Mother of Divine Children and Anthropophagy

Legends of Yamauba on Mt. Akiha

Yamauba monogatari: Yamauba Legends on Mt. Hongū

Yamauba as Mother of Kintarō

Childbirth, Bloodsucking, and Oni

Strings, Spinning, and Spiders

Similarities between Yamauba and Spiders

Oni versus Tsuchigumo, Yamagumo, and Yamauba

Feared and Worshipped Yamauba

3. Reading Minds and Telling Futures: Yamauba and the Cooper, The Smile of a Mountain Witch, and Throne of Blood

Mind-Reading Yamauba: Yamauba to okeya and Satori

Premodern Setsuwa of Mind Reading

The Smile of a Mountain Witch

Retelling and Re-creating Yamauba Stories

Possible Sources of Ōba’s Mind-Reading Yamauba

Selfless Yamauba of The Smile of a Mountain Witch

Fortune-Telling Yamauba: The Old Woman in Naranashi tori (Picking Wild Pears)

Shamanistic Yamauba in Hanayo no hime

The Witch in Throne of Blood

The Castle of the Spider’s Web and the Spider’s Web Forest

From the Woman in Kurozuka to the Witch of Throne of Blood

Desires, Impermanence, and the Wheel

From Yamauba in the Noh Play Yamanba to the Witch of Throne of Blood

Mind Reading, Future Telling, and Re-creation

4. Yamauba, Yasaburō Basa, Datsueba: Images of Premodern Crones, Yamauba’s Flying Ability, and Re-creation of a Prototype

Yamauba and Oni-Women, Revisited

Legends of Yasaburō Basa

Yasaburō Basa as Oni-Woman

Datsueba and Images of Premodern Crones

Datsueba’s Association with Yasaburō Basa and Yamauba

Medieval Prototypical Female Features

Processes of Adaptation and Re-creation of a Prototype

Commonalities between the Yasaburō Basa Story and Premodern Setsuwa

Ibaraki Dōji, Shuten Dōji, and Yasaburō Basa

Yasaburō Basa’s Influence on the Noh Play Yamanba

Yamauba no nakōdo (Yamauba Go-Between), a Variant of Yasaburō Basa

Concluding Remarks

5. Aging, Dementia, and Abandoned Women: An Interpretation of Yamauba

Yamauba’s Antisocial Behavior and Dementia

Gluttonous Yamauba and Dementia

Yamauba and Obasute-yama (Abandoned Women in the Mountains)

Mukashibanashi Obasute-yama

Obasute-yama in Other Literary Traditions

Did the Custom of Obasute-yama Really Exist?

Obasute-yama from a Poem to Narratives: Creation, Dissemination, and Transformation

Aging, Yamauba, and Healthy Life Expectancy

6. Yamamba Mumbo Jumbo: Yamauba in Contemporary Society

Yamauba and Village Markets

Market, Shibuya, and Yamanba-gyaru

Yamanba-gyaru Fashion and Ganguro

Yamanba-gyaru Disappear from Shibuya

Yamauba and Yamaubaesque

Yubaba in the Film Spirited Away

Yamauba in the Manga Hyakkiyakō shō

Yamauba in Fiction

Holy Man of Mt. Koya

Yamauba

Yamauba in Poetry: Watashi wa Anjuhimeko de aru (I Am Anjuhimeko)

Conclusion

Japanese and Chinese Names and Terms

Notes

References

About the Author

Index

Figures

0.1. Yamauba in Bakemono zukushi emaki (Picture scroll of monsters, Edo period), by Hokusai Suechika

1.1. Futakuchi onna from Tōsanjin yawa

1.2. Blossom Princess encounters the yamauba.

1.3. Yamanba in the noh play Nōgaku zu e: Yamanba

1.4. The oni-woman in the noh play Kurozuka (Adachigahara)

1.5. The woman spinning in the noh play Kurozuka (Adachigahara)

2.1. Yamauba Shrine on Mt. Akiha

2.2. Yamauba in Ehon Raikō ichidai ki (Illustrated book of Raikō’s life, 1796), by Okada Gyokuzan (1737–1808)

2.3. Yamauba in Kokkei sharekyōgaen (Cornucopia of humorous pictures), by Maki Bokusen (1775–1824)

2.4. Yamauba Nursing Kintoki, by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806)

2.5. Yamauba in Hyakki yagyō (Pictures of one hundred demons strolling at night, 1776 [1805]), by Toriyama Sekien

3.1. The evil spirit of Throne of Blood

4.1. Rōba oni no ude o mochisaru zu (Old woman leaving with the oni’s arm, 1889), by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892)

4.2. Statue of Datsueba in Shōjuin temple in Shinjuku ward, Tokyo

5.1. The Moon and the Abandoned Old Woman, 1891, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892)

6.1. A yamanba-gyaru in Shibuya

6.2. Shibuya scramble crossing and 109 Building

6.3. Yamauba, the Mountain Woman, by Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754–1799)

Acknowledgments

Yamauba and oni are among the cornerstones in my life that have made it so fascinating. In the score and more years I’ve been writing about the supernatural in literature I’ve benefited from the guidance of many exceptional people. I owe special thanks to Peter Knecht, Shelley Fenno Quinn, Richard Torrance, and Mark Bender, whose intellectual guidance has been wonderful. Komatsu Kazuhiko, Yamada Shōji, John Breen, Yasui Manami, Kiba Takatoshi, Araki Hiroshi, Inaga Shigemi, Kusunoki Ayako, Shiraishi Eri, Goza Yūichi, and Saka Chihiro of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) have been gracious in their assistance and encouragement. I am also very grateful to a great many scholars and intellectuals, including Tokuda Kazuo, Asakura Yoshiyuki, Kagawa Masanobu, Sasaki Takahiro, Tokunaga Seiko, Nagahara Junko, Matsumura Kaoruko, Michael Dylan Foster, Rebecca Copeland, Ann Sherif, Keller Kimbrough, Cody Poulton, Mauricio Martinez, Yuriko Suzuki, Felicia Katz-Harris, and Ben Dorman. The two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript were immensely generous and kind, giving valuable comments. Likewise, comments, friendship, and encouragement from the members of the Midwest Japan Seminar (MJS), especially Ethan Segal, Michael Bathgate, Louis Perez, Laura Miller, Elizabeth Lublin, Roy Hanashiro, and Thomas Rogers, are much appreciated. Discussions at meetings of the Midwest Japan Seminar have been invaluable for my publications. The students in my course Japanese Tales of the Supernatural at Miami Universiy have always been an inspiration, giving me new ideas and perspectives.

Utah State University Press acquistions editor Rachael Levay, director Darrin Pratt, assistant director and managing editor Laura Furney, and production manager Daniel Pratt have been so helpful and encouraging. Anne Morris Hooke, my neighbor and friend, Suzy Cincone and Robin DuBlanc, professional copyeditors, were professional and patient in proofreading my English. Appreciation is also extended to the staff at museums and historical sites in Japan and the United States. The staff at the Interlibrary Loan Office of Miami University Libraries and at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies have been invaluable in helping me obtain the many books and articles I requested for research. Many thanks go to the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, the Iwase Bunko Library of Nishio City, Ritsumeikan University Art Research Center, Hiroshima University Library, Japanese National Diet Digital Library, Itsukushima Shrine, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Dayton Art Museum for supplying the illustrations for the book.

My colleagues in the Department of German, Russian, Asian, and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (GRAMELAC) at Miami University, especially Margaret Ziolkowski, John Jeep, Shi Liang, and Kazue Harada, as well as the director of the Interactive Language Resource Center, Daniel Meyers, and Stan Toops and Ann Wicks of the East Asian Studies Program, are exemplars of collegiality—supportive always.

The research in this book was made possible by financial support from Miami University (through a Faculty Improvement Leave in the academic year of 2018–2019), the Committee of Faculty Research, the Japan–United States Friendship Commission, the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto. The environment—faculty, staff, resource, facilities, location—of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, where I stayed from January to July 2019, was superb and provided marvelous access to sources indispensable to completing this manuscript.

Chapter 1 is a revised and expanded version of the article that appeared as Yamauba versus Oni-Women: Devouring and Helping Yamauba Are Two Sides of One Coin, Asian Ethnology 78 (2) (2019). I am grateful to the journal editor, Ben Dorman, for permission to use the article in its revised form. Chapter 4 is an expanded version of an article I submitted to Japan Reivew in 2018. John Breen, the editor of Japan Review, and the two anonymous reviewers provided valuable comments that enabled me to enhance reader comprehension. When the publication date of this manuscript was advanced, the article was withdrawn, but their guidance specific to the work remains.

Finally, but not least, the love and encouragement of my family—my husband Brent, daughter MaryEllen, and son Warwick—are as precious as they are inspirational. As Brent was diagnosed with cancer in the winter of 2020 over 2021, my family have fought the illness with him together in unison under the COVID-19 environment. This book is thus dedicated to my family.

Introduction

Yamauba’s Topos, Archetype, History, and Gender

IN MANY CULTURES, WHEN HUMAN BEINGS ENCOUNTER some inexplicable phenomena—especially if it’s mysterious and inspires fear—they endeavor to make sense of them by invoking supernatural creatures. This is true of Japanese culture and society. As Michael Dylan Foster writes in The Book of Yōkai, yōkai (weird or mysterious creatures) have often been called upon in Japan to explain incomprehensible phenomena (Foster 2015, 5).¹ A yamauba (sometimes yamanba or yamamba), often translated as a mountain witch or mountain crone, is one such being. To many contemporary Japanese, the word yamauba conjures up images of an unsightly old woman who lives in the mountains and devours humans. The witch in the Grimm Brothers’ Hansel and Gretel and Baba Yaga of Russian folklore can be considered Western/Eurasian counterparts of the yamauba figure. A yamauba is commonly described as tall, with long hair, piercing eyes, and a large mouth that opens from ear to ear (Komatsu 2000, 428). As Monica Bethe and Karen Brazell write, a yamauba appears in various Japanese texts as a god, a demon, an entertainer, a mother; enlightened, tormented, helpful, and harmful (Bethe and Brazell 1978, 8). She is an enigmatic woman living in the mountains.

In recent years, the figure of the yamauba has attracted much attention among scholars of women’s literature as a woman not constrained by conformative gender norms or social expectations (Kobayashi Fukuko 2016, 2). Thus a yamauba connotes not only a mysterious female in the mountains but also the ambivalent status of Japanese women past and present, as well as the Japanese psyche that creates and re-creates prototypes. Broadly speaking, the old women who appear in the 156th episode of Yamato monogatari (Tales of Yamato, ca. mid-tenth century) and in The Old Woman on the Mountain and How the Hunters’ Mother Became an Oni and Tried to Devour Her Children, tales from the Konjaku monogatarishū (Tales of Times Now Past, ca. 1120), may be considered yamauba, and their portrayal has relevance to contemporary daughter-in-law and mother-in-law relationships, elder issues, and dementia.²

Situating the yamauba within the construct of yōkai and archetypes, this study investigates the attributes of yamauba, and offers an interpretation through the examination of yamauba narratives including folktales, literary works, legends, modern fiction, manga, and anime. I believe a holistic image of yamauba will emerge through an examination of both yamauba’s well-known and lesser-known traits. Investigating how and why these attributes have appeared in various texts over time sheds light on the process of adaptation and re-creation of a prototype. Hence, this study also involves the creation, dissemination, and transformation of narratives and imagery.

Yamauba as Yōkai

According to Ema Tsutomu (1884–1979), historian and the author of Nihon yōkai henge-shi (History of Japanese yōkai shape-shifters, 1923), the majority of yōkai shape-shifters in narratives created before the Muromachi period (1336–1573) took male form when they appeared in front of humans. However, in narratives created after the Ōnin War (1467–1477), and especially in the early modern period, the number of yōkai shape-shifters in female form increased dramatically, appearing two and a half times more often than male figures (Ema 1923, 131). The reasons for this were, Ema writes, because in tales of the early modern period ghosts and apparitions were motivated by passion or grudges, traits associated with women because they form stronger attachments than men. Yōkai that originally appeared as animals, plants, or tools were also probably transformed into women because, Ema states, being female made it easier for them to trick and cajole men (Ema 1923, 131).

Folklorist Miyata Noboru’s (1936–2000) explanation for the large number of female yōkai is more sympathetic to women. He contends that in narratives young women often played the role of messengers between this world and the world beyond, and in doing so they had a tendency to become yōkai. Miyata noted that a young woman’s spiritual power, a kind of spirit possession, was at work, particularly among young maids of the lowest social strata. Fundamentally this is because of the spiritual power that women possess. Women are said to be more attuned to the spiritual realm than men; Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), the founder of Japanese folklore studies, called this power imo no chikara (women’s power) (Miyata 1987, 117, 248–49).³ But the question remains whether men were considered to be more attuned to the spiritual realm than women before the Ōnin War. I speculate that a key to the answer lies in societal changes surrounding women in Japan. The period of increasing numbers of female yōkai in narratives coincides with a decline in the status of women.

The early modern period is often referred to as a dark age for Japanese women (Hayashi R. 1982, 325), a time when women’s social activities were extremely limited (Fukuda M. 1995, 257). Even before the early modern period, attitudes toward women had steadily declined. "Conventionally, the fourteenth century is known as the period when virolocal institutions (yomeiri kon) became common, as evident in the delivery of dowries and a new term for divorce (oidasu, ‘to chase out [the wife]’). Moreover, the wife increasingly came to be viewed as the husband’s possession" (Farris 2006, 156). Probably women, increasingly confined and suppressed by societal and cultural norms and constraints, found their emotional outlet in ghostly, monstrous figures. In the same vein, men’s feelings of guilt or sympathy toward such women may have helped create and increase the number of female yōkai.⁴

The Term Yamauba (Yamanba or Yamamba)

The terms yamauba, yamanba, and yamamba are presently all written in the same kanji, or sino-characters, 山姥, and many Japanese use these terms interchangeably. Some dictionaries, however, make the distinction that the pronunciation yamauba often seems to be used for legendary or folkloric figures, whereas the nasalized forms, yamanba or yamamba, are used in texts for the performing arts such as noh and kabuki.⁵ In this study, I have chosen to primarily use yamauba because of my heavy reliance on folktales and legends.

Whereas the characters 山姥 are used in contemporary Japan, various other characters were used in premodern times. For example, the characters 山優婆 (literally, gentle crone in the mountains) are used to describe the noh play Yamanba (early fifteenth century), generally attributed to Zeami (1363–1443), and in an otogizōshi tale titled Tōshōji nezumi monogatari (Tales of mice at Tōshōji temple, 1537).⁶ The edition of the Japanese dictionary Setsuyōshū from the second year of Kōji (1556) defines the term uba, 優婆, as an ordinary old woman (Sasaki R. 2008, 203). Isshiki Tadatomo (d. 1597), a military lord and poet, also used the characters meaning gentle crone in the mountains in his Getsuan suiseiki (Getsuan’s collection of tales) (Isshiki 2008, 84). But the yamanba of the noh play had also been written as 山祖母 (grandmother in the mountains), 山婆 (old woman in the mountains), and 山伯母 (elder aunt in the mountains) (Sasaki R. 2008, 203).

The first appearance of the term yamauba in literary materials occurred in the Muromachi period (Komatsu K. 2000, 428; Orikuchi 2000, 300). As attested by early works that describe yamauba, including the aforementioned noh play Yamanba and the entry on the sixth month of 1460 in Gaun nikkenroku, a diary of Zen priest Zuikei Shūhō (1391–1473), the term predates the Ōnin War. It does not appear in the Wamyō ruijushō (Japanese names for things classified and annotated, ca. 930s), the first Japanese-language dictionary, or in an encyclopedia complied during the Muromachi period titled Ainōshō (ca. 1446). However, the Nippo jisho (Japanese-Portuguese dictionary), compiled by a Jesuit missionary and published around 1603–1604, has an entry for yamauba that reads: The face of the yamauba is not known. They are believed to live in the mountains (Doi et al. 1980, 809). Several years later a yamauba is mentioned in the entry for the fourth month of 1609 in Tōdaiki (Records of the present age), a historical record possibly written by Matsudaira Tadaaki (1583–1644), a maternal grandson of the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616). In this entry, a yamauba appears in a show in the area of the Tōfukuji temple of Higashiyama in Kyoto: Her hair is white and she is red around the eyes. She swallows her food in a gulp. The high and low see her. If one listens carefully, she is a crazy albino, so I hear (Zoku Gunsho Ruijū Kanseikai 1995, 149).

Interestingly, the Wakan sansaizue (Japanese-Chinese collected illustrations of the three realms, ca. 1713), an encyclopedia, explains the yamauba as an animal, native to the regions of Guangdong and Guangxi in China, that has only one leg, three toes and three fingers on each hand, and begs for food from people at night. The author, Terajima Ryōan (b. 1654), mentions nothing about Japanese yamauba. I should note, however, that the presence of three toes and three fingers is typical in portrayals of oni (demons, ogres, monsters). Yamauba have a very strong relationship with oni.

Yamaoka Genrin (1631–1672), a widely recognized intellectual of seventeenth-century Japan, states that the uba, 姥, of yamauba is more in line with the hime, 姫, of Tatsutahime (goddess of autumn) and Yamahime (princess of the mountains), interpreting it more broadly than meaning simply an old woman (Yamaoka 1993, 46). This is the same as Yanagita Kunio’s observation that yamauba and yamahime were originally euphemisms (used by villagers) for a mysterious woman living deep in the mountains (Yanagita 1978–1979, 1:255). In the same vein, folklorist Konno Ensuke (1914–1982) explains that yōkai-like creatures that are believed to live in the mountains are usually considered the yamahime type; and if they are old, they are called yamauba or yamahaha (literally, mountain mother). As there are a number of people who believe that hime refers to young women and uba to old women, they came to be thought of as two distinct types: young and old, yamahime and yamauba. But originally there was probably only one type: strange women in the mountains.

Figure 0.1. Yamauba in Bakemono zukushi emaki (Picture scroll of monsters, Edo period), by Hokusai Suechika. (Courtesy of International Research Center for Japanese Studies.)

Konno categorizes female yōkai into three types: yamauba, spirits of snow (yuki no sei), and strange creatures of the ocean (umi no kai) (Konno 1981, 221; 223–66).⁷ Ōba Minako (1930–2007) writes in her short story Yamanba no bishō (The Smile of a Mountain Witch, 1976): Surely these old witches [yamauba] cannot have been wrinkled old hags from birth . . . For one reason or another, however, we never hear about young witches living up in the mountains (Ōba M. 1991, 195).

Yamauba’s Topos: Mountains Where Eerie Things Happen

"Perhaps no image signifies the danger of the uncontainable, ravenous female as readily as the yamamba, writes Rebecca Copeland, scholar of Japanese literature (Copeland 2005, 21). As she says, the voracious appetite of the yamauba, especially her man-eating trait, is her most well-known characteristic. Indeed, a survey conducted by Komatsuzaki Susumu and Komatsuzaki Tatsuko reveals that the image children have of yamanba is fixed regardless of their age or gender; children say that a yamauba eats people and changes her appearance. She knows everything about mountains. She lives in the mountains and eats people who are lost. She eats oxen and horses. A creepy old woman" (Komatsuzaki and Komatsuzaki 1967, n.p.).⁸ The survey notes that yamauba’s fixed image could be due to well-circulated folktales, but the influence of illustrated children’s books and manga is believed to be significant, too.

As Mizuta Noriko (1937–), scholar of comparative literature, emphasizes, Yamauba’s identity is the topos of mountains (Mizuta 2002, 13). Mountains are considered to be sacred places in many cultures, and this is true in Japan as well. Miyake Hitoshi (1933–), scholar of religious studies, gives several reasons for this, but two are especially pertinent to this study: Mountains are viewed as the dwelling place of spirits of the dead and ancestor spirits. Tombs are built on mountains, and Mountains are regarded as liminal space between this world and the otherworld. The mountain is an avenue to heaven; a mountain cave is an entrance to the otherworld (Miyake 2001, 78–79).

The idea that mountains are the dwelling place of spirits of the dead and ancestor spirits reminds one of the mukashibanashi (old tales, folktales) called Obasute-yama—stories of abandoning old people, especially old women, in the mountains. While there is no evidence of abandoning old people in agricultural societies, such tales are still popularly narrated in various media. Ōshima Tatehiko (1932–), folklore scholar, notes that mukashibanashi and legends of Obasute are deeply related to Japanese funeral customs such as aerial sepulture (fūsō) and the double-grave system (ryōbosei). In the double-grave system, a single deceased person has two graves, one for burying the body and one a tombstone erected by the family to visit and pray for the deceased. The place where old women are abandoned in Obasute stories would correspond to the burial site or aerial sepulture, where the actual dead body is buried (or abandoned). The word obasute is considered to have come from the term ohatsuse, originally meaning a burial site. That is, Obasute was a name for a graveyard called Ohase or Ohatsuse. Hase temple and Hatsuse in Kyoto are located on the borderline between the sato (settlement, village) and the mountains, indicating there was once a cemetery there (Ōshima 2001a, 4–5; Miyata 1997, 20).

There are many cases in real life where a mountain is designated as a place for burial. The purpose was to appease deceased spirits through the spiritual power of the mountain (Saitō 2010, 274). Indeed, in the noh play Yamanba, Yamanba projects a mountain landscape of the dead in her song: Awesome, the deep ravines. In graveyards, beating their own bones, fiendish wraiths groan, bemoaning their deeds from former lives. In cemeteries, offering flowers, angelic spirits rejoice in the good rewards of enlightened acts (Bethe and Brazell 1978, 217; SNKBZ 1994–2002, 59:575).

Wakamori Tarō (1915–1977), historian and folklorist, assumes that the Obasute-yama stories focus on a belief in the existence of some eerie beings deep in the mountains or at the bottom of nearby mountain valleys. Wakamori suspects this belief arose because of the strange or disorienting experiences villagers had when they went into the mountains, including having hallucinations or visions of human-like beings. Perhaps long ago, villagers surmised, people were pushed into deep valleys or mountains to put an end to their lives, and their angry spirits, forced to die untimely deaths and unable to go on to the other world, appeared in the mountains to harass villagers (Wakamori 1958, 215). Although Wakamori is writing about the Obasute stories, these eerie beings can be easily interpreted as old women, yamauba. The basis for the belief that something eerie existed in the mountains was already there, and the groundwork for yamauba to emerge in the medieval period (1185–1600) already existed in ancient times.⁹

Baba Akiko (1928–), poet and critic, asserts that "it is important to acknowledge these setsuwa (tale literature or narrative; myths, legends, folktales, anecdotes, and the like) have been handed down as reality.¹⁰ That is, people had strong beliefs of and fear about the existence of strange, aged woman in the mountains—like a mountain mother who could be a counterpart of a mountain father . . . these women never wanted to live a life outside the mountains" (Baba Akiko 1988, 279). Baba finds a clue to an origin of yamauba in a description of three entertainers met by Lady Sarashina (the daughter of Sugawara no Takasue, b. 1008) at Mt. Ashigara. Lady Sarashina left a memoir known to us as Sarashina nikki (As I Cross a Bridge of Dreams, ca. eleventh century). In the memoir of her experience traveling to Mt. Ashigara as an impressionable twelve-year-old girl, Lady Sarashina writes: We lodged at the foot of the mountain, and I felt fearfully lost in the depth of the moonless night. From somewhere in the dark three women singers emerged, the eldest being about fifty, the others about twenty and fourteen . . . Our party was charmed by their appearance and even more impressed when they started singing, for they had fine, clear voices that rose to the heavens . . . We were all so sad to see them disappear into those fearful mountains (Sugawara no Takasue no musume 1971, 47; SNKBZ 1994–2002, 26:287–88). Baba believes that these entertainers made their based on being near the mountains, and she conjectures that as these