Ubume on arvau

Wikipedia / Ubume

(also or ) are Japanese yōkai, ghosts of women who died in childbirth, but may have borne a child alive.

The creature is equivalent to the Chinese (, "wench bird") but local Japanese folklore has been blended into the legend.

Throughout folk stories and literature the identity and appearance of ubume varies. However, she is most commonly depicted as the spirit of a woman who has died during childbirth. Passersby will see her as a normal-looking woman carrying a baby. She will typically try to give the passerby her child then disappears. When the person examines the child in his arm, he discovers it to be a bundle of leaves or large rock.

Nomenclature

The ubume () of Japanese lore was considered the equivalent of the Chinese guhuoniao (; pinyin: , "lady capturing-bird", translated as "wench bird"), alias rumu niao (; 'mother's milk bird') or (; ) —as well-explained in various pieces of Edo period scholarship.

Due to the ubume being equated with or conflated with the Chinese version, the Chinese written name has been coopted to be read as ubume or "ubumedori".

An alternate kanji representation gives it the meaning of (ubume, "birthing woman").

Supposedly also called , due to its resemblance to a wetnurse ().

General description

The ubume is explained to be the ghost of a mother who died giving childbirth, i.e., a "birthing woman ghost". When a pregnant woman dies without delivering her child, and is buried, but the child still comes out alive, her soul (, i.e. hun and po) turns into this monstrous female, soaked in blood below the waist and frail-like, asking passersby to hold her baby, and if the person complies he gains some sort of a boon (e.g. extraordinary strength), according to a certain source (cf. of 1687 below). If the passerby refuses and flees, he may be cursed and develop a fever, even unto death.

But typically in folk narratives, 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 steadily heavier, (even heavier than stone) 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 Jizō, a stone tower (stupa), or tree leaves.

She has been depicted wearing blood-stained loincloth () by various Edo-period artists (cf. ), as according to folk tradition.

She is also said to try to snatch other people's baby out of craving to have a child of her own. Or she may have borne the child alive, and the ghost mother seeks out nourishment for the bereft or orphaned child.

It also has the habit that of trying to breastfeed the child it kidnaps, leading to its alias name , as aforementioned.

Another piece of lore is that the ubume tends to leave droplets of blood on clothing when it intrudes into a household, and this should be taken as a sign of its presence (Cf. from Ibaraki that the bird marks the child's clothing with its poison milk).

As for further details regarding the immense strength that can be obtained from the ubume, there are narratives where the newly gifted person washed his face and wrung dry the towel, it ruptured into two pieces, and even four pieces, making him realize he has been endowed with strength. The man later succeeded as a powerful sumo wrestler.

Attestations

Konjaku monogatarishū

Stories about ubume have been told in Japan since at least the 12th century, in the Konjaku Monogatarishū, where a samurai (Urabe no Suetake, cf. image right) encounters a woman () at the riverbank who asks him to hold her child. She demands her child back and when the samurai refused, it turned into a bundle of leaves.

Kokon hyakumonogatari hyōban

They are also mentioned in the : "When a woman loses her life in childbirth, her spiritual attachment itself becomes this ghost. In form, it is soaked in blood from the waist down and wanders about crying, Be born! Be born! (; )".

Kii zōdan shū

The ("Collected yarns of the uncanny"; pub. Jōkyō4/1687) was already drawn on above to provide the general description that if a woman who dies in labor but produces a live child after internment, her soul transmogrifies into the ubume. The same work returns somewhat later to explain that when "a woman wanting a child (for a long time) gets pregnant by chance, but dies in difficult labor or delivery, her obsession or double-soul (kon and haku) transforms into the shape of a bird, flies by night, and captures other people's children". It has been stressed that it is the obsession (obsessed soul) that transforms into this being, and that a similar description also occurs in the Kokon hyakumonogatari hyōban (above).

This work also provides the aforementioned lore about the breasted bird having cravings to breastfeed the child it abducts, and how the bird flies by at night and leaves blood stains on children's clothing, leading to the taboo against leaving clothes hung out to dry overnight.

Wakan sansai zue

The encyclopedia records that according to the local legend the ubumedori appears on the seashores of the westerly parts of Japan, and the people of Kyushu describe it as resembling a large gull in appearance and voice, appearing usually on a pitch-black night of light rain. The spot where the bird appears, there is usually "phosphor fire" (eerie flame, like a will-o'-the-wisp). It is said to shapeshift into a human woman with a baby, and whoever encounters this creature will ask a passerby to hold her child; he should beware of fleeing from fright, lest the creature will cause chill-shivers and high fever, which can even be fatal. However, if a stalwart man accepts the favor and carries the child, he will come to no harm.

Gazu hyakki yagyō

Toriyama Sekiens encyclopedia of ghosts, goblins, and ghouls, Gazu hyakki yagyō (An'ei5/1776) includes and illustrated entry for "".

This is perhaps the most famous depiction of ubume, but no text is provided beyond the title. The ubume stands by a river holding a child, topless, but clad in blood-stained sheet from the waist below (cf. image above right and for further details including symbolisms).

Kaga sōdō jikki

An ominous shrieking creepy bird was dubbed ubumedori in Kanazawa, (now in Ishikawa prefecture), and connected with the so-called , the scandalous affairs of the Kaga Domain involving accusations of adultery and murder plots. After the death of the lady who was implicated in the affair, ominous bird-screeches were heard, and signs of some creature stirring in the mansion. An archer was sent to hunt it, and a heron-like but unfamiliar strange bird was caught. The omnious screeches were heard throughout the city, and the culprit dubbed . The bird no longer appeared after the city suffered the great fire. This item is recorded in the Kaga sōdō jikki or the "true chronicle" of the affair (of which there are variant copies with different titles).

Local lore

In Ibaraki Prefecture, there is a similar legend concerning a yōkai called the ubametori which flies by night, and when it spots children's clothing hung dry, it imagines would think of the child as their own, and mark the clothes with its milk, which is said to be poisonous.

This "ubametori" of Ibaraki bears close similarity with the kokakuchō i.e. guhuoniao the "wench bird" of China, and the folklore probably derives from Chinese scholarship, introduced by some Japanese person with learning.

By other names

Ubume in Hinoemata, Minamiaizu District and Kaneyama, Ōnuma District, Fukushima Prefecture were called "". It is said that when they encounter someone, they make that person hug a baby and then disappear in peace and the one hugging the baby will have their throat bitten by the baby. It is said that when one encounters an obo, one should throw a piece of cloth at it, such as a string with a billhook attached in the case of men, or an , tenugui, or a yumaki (waistcloth} in the case of women, thus diverting the obos attention for a chance to escape. It is also said that if one does end up holding the baby, hugging the baby with its face turned the other way will prevent one from being bitten.

Also, the (like "ubu" in "ubume" ) was originally a dialect term referring to newborns. In Yanaizu, Kawanuma District in the same Fukushima Prefecture, there is a legend concerning the who asked a man to hold her child (obo) while she did her hair, and after he complied, he received a stack of mochi made of gold as reward.

In the Nishimatsuura District, Saga Prefecture and in Miyamachi Miyaji, Aso, Kumamoto Prefecture, they are called "ugume" and it is said that they appear at night and they would make people embrace a baby a night, but when dawn comes, they would generally be a rock, a stone tower, or a straw beater. (A type of ("ship ghost") called "" is known on in Kumamoto Prefecture, as well as , one of the Gotō Islands, in Nagasaki Prefecture).

On Iki Island (Nagasaki Prefecture), they are called "" or "" and they occur when a young person dies or when a woman dies from difficult childbirth, and they would sway back and forth before disappearing, having the appearance of a creepy blue light.

In Iwaki Province, now Fukushima Prefecture and Miyagi Prefecture, it is said that the ("dragon lantern"; an atmospheric ghost light said to be lit by a dragon spirit) would appear at beaches and try to come up to land, but it is said that this is because an ubume is carrying a ryūtō to the shore. In Kitaazumi District, Nagano Prefecture, ubume are called yagomedori, and they are said to stop at clothes drying at night, and it is said that putting on those clothes would result in dying before one's husband.

Folkloristics

Many scholars have associated the ubume with the legend of the hitobashira ('human pillar'), where a sacrificial mother and child "are buried under one of the supporting pillars of a new bridge".

Minkata Kumagus (1915) draws comparison to the ubumedori of Kyushu accompanied by phosphorescent light, as described in the Wakan sansai zue, and the folkloric strange phenomenon of aosagi-no-hi ("heron's fire"). He remarks that Hayashi Ranzan (1583-1657) in has recorded an anecdote of a man who spied on the alleged ubume that issued babylike cries in the night, but it turned out to be nothing more than a "blue heron" (aosagi).

The in Shizuoka Prefecture, 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-16th 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.

In narratives exhibiting the strength-gaining motif (cf. the man who becomes sumo wrestler, above), folklorist explains that the dead mother who becomes an ubume holds a powerful grudge, wishing to restore a strong child back into the world, and while she does have the extraordinary supernatural energy for trying to "deliver" a dead child back into the world, it only succeeds in a twisted way, and manifests itself instead as the endowment of great strength on a cooperator.

Superstitious customs

There are certain superstitions and rituals relating to the ubume. It was believed that when a pregnant woman dies , she and the fetus must be buried separately in order to prevent the ubume from materializing. The gruesome practice of slitting a dead pregnant woman's belly open to remove the fetus for was practiced in wide areas in early modern Japan, and remained in practice into the 19th and even early 20th century in rural parts. In some parts of the Tohoku region, after the fetus is separated, the cremated bones would be buried together, but with three straw doll, or the

Sometimes, one or several straw dolls would have been crafted to be buried with the mother and child who had either undergone the postmortem separation, or the doll may be used in lieu of performing the mi futatsu.

The idea that a pregnant woman who dies and get buried transforms into an ubume has existed since ancient times; which is why it has been said that , one ought to cut the fetus out the abdomen and put it on the mother in a hug as they are buried. In some regions, if the fetus cannot be cut out, a doll would be put beside her.

The ubume's blood-soaked appearance may also be connected with the Buddhist notion that women who died while pregnant were believed to fall into a hell with a pond of blood, and the stigma of uncleanliness was attached to this Therefore, there was even a certain cleansing ritual called that takes place by a river after a mother died in childbirth. A small piece of cloth is stretched across four waist-high poles, and the bereaved as well as passersby cast water at the cloth scooped up with a ladle.

In art

Tokugawa-era artists produced many images of ubume, usually represented as "naked from the waist up, wearing a red skirt and carrying a small baby", or rather, wearing a blood-soaked loincloth.

Sawaki Sūshi Hyakkai zukan (Genbun] 2/1737) is a picture scroll featuring "Ubume" as one of its yōkai; the postscript to the scroll professes that it was copied from the original painted by Kanō Motonobu　(1476–1559). Another illustration of ubume comes from Toriyama Sekiens Gazu hyakki yagyō (An'ei 5/1776). Sekien too admits he consulted Kanō Motonobu's Hyakki yagyō..

Joly offers as example the "Nissaka-shuku" by Kuniyoshi in , however, the inscription does not explicitly mention ubume. A woman is killed by a bandit, but she being devout in prayer, the Kwannon goddess assumes the guise of a monk and keeps the baby alive by feeding it ame (probably mizuame, or malt syrup), and the woman is able to appear before her husband to tell the story and entrust the baby at a (somewhere near the Nissaka station).

Analysis of art

Sekien situates his ubume wrapped in a white sheet stained with blood from the waist below, standing on a narrow path next to a river. White symbolizes death in Japan (the deceased is dressed in white garb), while the blood may represent birth.

It is noted in connection with the ubume that water is symbolic of both miscarriages, called and the stillborn child, called . Another water symbolism in Sekien's use of river in the background is the allusion to the Buddhist concept of the Sanzu River, a river that must be crossed by the dead on the way to afterlife.

In popular literature

Natsuhiko Kyogoku's best-selling detective novel, The Summer of the Ubume, 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.