Ubume
Ubume are Japanese yōkai of pregnant women. They can also be written as 憂婦女鳥. 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 disappear. When the person goes to look at the child in their arms, they discover it is only a bundle of leaves or large rock.
Etymology
Some Japanese sources coopt the Chinese name 姑獲鳥 and read it Japanese style as "ubume" or "ubumedori".From Chinese sources, Japanese learned men learned that this "wench bird" had the characteristic that "in front of their chest they have two breasts".
Thus the creature's name is also styled 乳母鳥, with the explanation that the bird breastfeeds the child it kidnaps, and because it is like a menoto/uba it is called a ubame.
An alternate kanji representation gives it another meaning of 産鳥.
The term ubume originally was the name for a kind of small sea fish, according to American missionary Hepburn's guesswork.
Attestations
''Konjaku Monogatarishū''
Stories about ubume have been told in Japan since at least the 12th century, in the Konjaku Monogatarishū, where a samurai 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 Kii Zōdan Shū explains that "when a woman wanting a child, gets pregnant by chance, but dies in difficult labor or delivery, her soul becomes so obsessed it transforms into a bird, flies by night, and captures other people's children".''Bencao Gangmu''
The Compendium of Materia Medica gives entry on the Chinese equivalent gu huo niao , which goes by various other names such as the .It is stated in this work that "they are transformations of women who died giving birth" which is also stated with slightly different phrasing in the Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang from the Tang dynasty..
''Wakan sansai zue''
The Japanese encyclopedia Wakan Sansai Zue also has an entry on itThe encyclopedia records that according to the local legend of the people of Kyushu, Japan, the ubume is a bird that resembles the gull in appearance and voice and it tends to show up on a pitch-black night of light rain. The spot where the bird appears, there is usually "phosphor fire". It is said to shapeshift into a human woman accompanied by a child, and whoever encounters this 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.
Other Japanese 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 "obo". 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, such as a string with a billhook attached for men, or an okoso , tenugui, or a yumaki at it, thus diverting the obos attention for an opportunity to escape. It is also said that if one does end up hugging the baby, hugging the baby with its face turned the other way will prevent one from being bitten. Also, the obo is originally a dialect term referring to newborns. In Yanaizu, Kawanuma District in the same Fukushima Prefecture, there is a legend concerning the obo daki kannnon who asked a man to hold her child 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..
On Iki Island, they are called "unme" or "uume" 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 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.
Social and cultural influence
The yokai ubume was conceived through various means of social and religious influence. During the late Medieval period of Japan, the attitudes surrounding motherhood started to change. Rather than the infant being considered a replication of the mother and an extension of her body, the fetus started to be seen as separate from the mother. This distancing of mother and fetus caused an emphasis on the paternal ownership of the child, reducing the mother to nothing more than a vessel for male reproduction. For a mother to die in childbirth or late pregnancy soon came to be considered a sin, the blame for the death of the unborn child being placed on the mother who in a sense was responsible for the infant's death.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 when a pregnant woman dies, 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 is thought to be because in feudal society, the continuation of the family was considered important, so pregnant women who died were believed to fall into a hell with a pond of blood.
Folkloristics
In Japanese folklore the ubume is 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 Jizō.
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 Shōshin'in Temple 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, 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 art
-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 koshimaki loincloth.Another illustration of ubume comes e from Toriyama Sekiens late-18th-century encyclopedia of ghosts, goblins, and ghouls,
Gazu Hyakki Yagyō.