Ubume

What it is

Ubume is a Japanese yōkai, the broad Japanese word for a spirit or monster in traditional storytelling. She is the ghost of a woman who died while pregnant or in labour, and in some tellings the child was born after her burial. She looks like any ordinary woman with an infant in her arms, bloodied below the waist. What marks her out is what she does: she asks a stranger to take the baby, then disappears. The bundle then proves to be leaves, a boulder, a stone Jizō or a small stone tower. She is also said to snatch other women's infants.

Where it comes from

Written records go back to the Konjaku Monogatarishū, a tale collection of the 1100s, where the warrior Urabe no Suetake meets her at a river. Edo-period books added detail: the Kokon hyakumonogatari hyōban, the Kii zōdan shū of 1687, and Toriyama Sekien's illustrated Gazu hyakki yagyō of 1776. A chronicle of the Kaga domain scandal records a shrieking bird, caught by an archer and named Ubume-dori, that stopped after the city burned. Scholars of the period treated her as the same being as the Chinese guhuoniao, and that bird's characters came to be read ubume in Japan.

How it is done

The meeting is told as a scene rather than a procedure. A woman stands by water or on a road at night and asks a passerby to hold her baby for a moment. She leaves. The child in the arms grows heavier and heavier, past the weight of stone, until it cannot be carried, and then it is seen to be a rock, a Jizō image, a stupa or a pile of leaves. Fukushima tellers said a piece of cloth thrown at her would hold her attention long enough for a person to get away.

Tools and materials

The items thrown at the Fukushima obo are household things: a hood called an okōso zukin, a tenugui hand towel, a yumaki waistcloth, and for men a billhook tied to a cord. Edo-period artists painted her in a koshimaki, a loincloth, stained with blood, or in a bloodied sheet from the waist down. Stone objects recur in the tales too, as a Jizō statue or a small tower. The statue kept at Shōshin'in wears white robes and is only head, torso and arms.

What it is for

Her motive, as the stories frame it, is a mother's: to see a child born, fed and raised. Two versions run through the tales. In one she has lost her baby and wants a stranger to carry it. In the other she craves a child of her own, takes other women's infants and tries to nurse them. Holding her child could bring a curse and fever or, in one telling, unusual strength: a man who took the infant found he could tear a wet towel in two, and later did well as a sumo wrestler.

Peoples and places

Names change from district to district. Around Hinoemata and Kaneyama in Fukushima she is obo, a local word for a newborn. At Yanaizu, in the same prefecture, a Kannon statue is called obodaki Kannon, the Kannon whose child was held. People in Nishimatsuura, Saga, and at Aso in Kumamoto say ugume, and on Iki Island unme or uume, where she shows as a blue light. In Kitaazumi, Nagano, she is yagomedori, and in Ibaraki ubametori. Kyushu accounts describe a gull-like bird.

What people believe

The tales work with an old idea of two souls, kon and haku, the same pair known in Chinese as hun and po. A death in labour leaves the soul unable to let go, and that clinging, sometimes called an obsession, is what takes visible shape, as a woman or as a night-flying bird. Buddhist figures are woven in: the false child may be a Jizō, and Kannon appears in a Fukushima place name. Scholars link her to the hitobashira, the human pillar, in which a mother and child are said to lie beneath a new bridge.

When it is done

She belongs to the night. Kyushu accounts put her on the shore on a very dark night with light rain, a pale flame burning nearby. Households kept an evening rule: washing should not stay out to dry overnight, since she might mark a child's garments with blood or with milk. One temple keeps a date. At Shōshin'in in Shizuoka her statue is shown once a year, in July, when women come to pray for an easy birth and enough milk.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Folklorists have read the figure in several ways. Noboru Miyata took the strength stories as a grudge that cannot do what it wants: a mother's drive to bring a strong child into the world goes wrong and ends up in someone else's muscles. Minkata Kumagus in 1915 compared the Kyushu bird with a will-o'-the-wisp effect called the heron's fire, and noted an older writer, Hayashi Ranzan, who traced a crying ubume to a blue heron. Stone and Walter in 2008 discussed the Shizuoka temple legend, set in the mid-1500s.

Compare and confuse

Edo-period writers identified her with the Chinese guhuoniao, a name rendered as 'wench bird'. Chinese sources also call that being the mother's milk bird and the nighttime travelling girl. In Japanese the shared characters 姑獲鳥 are read ubume or ubumedori, while a different pair, 産女 or 'birthing woman', gives the same sound. Ibaraki's ubametori is close to the Chinese bird. A ship ghost also called ugume on two island groups is a related but separate name.

Today

The clearest living trace is at Shōshin'in, a temple in Shizuoka. Its ubume statue has no lower body, is dressed in white, and is put on view for one day each July, when women pray for a safe delivery and for milk. Sweets placed before the image are then given out. Edo-period prints kept her picture in circulation, and the tale continues in regional folklore collections, where the coastal bird and the roadside mother are told side by side.

Questions people ask about Ubume

Good reading and sources

• Ubume on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data