Yamauba or Yamamba (山姥) (role )

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Biography:

Karen Brazell wrote in Traditional Japanese Theater: An Anthology of Plays on page 207: "Legends about a mysterious old woman form part of the background of Yamamba [a Noh play attributed to Zeami]. The mountain woman depicted in the play, like the aggregate of the legends, is an enigma; she is, simultaneously, a benevolent demon, a supernatural human, and an enlightened being tormented by delusive attachments. In short, she seems to be an impossible bundle of contradictions until one understands a major point of the play: "good and evil are not two; right and wrong are the same." This concept of nondualism, popular in medieval Japan, is also developed in the play Eguchi, in shich a lowly femal entertainer is revealed to be an incarnation of a deity."

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Noriko T. Reider wrote on pages 61-62, in chapter 4, of her Japanese Demon Lore: "Jealousy and shame are often intrinsic characteristics of fierce female oni who exact revenge against the men and/or women causing their undying angst.... Yet, some female oni are relatively detached from the jealous emotions stemming from heterosexual relationships, and yamauba (literally mountain old women) are prime examples of this."

"The medieval Noh text aptly entitled Yamamba describes “yamamba (yamauba) is a female oni living in the mountains.” Indeed, even now, to many contemporary Japanese, the word “yamauba” conjures up images of an ugly 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 counterparts of the yamauba figure. The Konjaku monogatarishū depicts one such yamauba in the story titled “Sanseru onna minamiyamashina ni yuki oni ni aite nigetaru koto” (How a Woman Who Was Bearing a Child Went to South Yamashina, Encountered an Oni, and Escaped). A young pregnant woman secretly gives birth in the mountain hut of a seemingly kind old woman, only to discover that the old woman is actually an oni with plans to eat her newborn baby. The image of the yamauba is, however, complex.... By the end of the seventeenth century, the oni in the story has come to be considered the mother of Kintarō, a legendary super-child raised in the mountains. Kintarō is the childhood name of Sakata no Kintoki, one of Raikō’s shitennō who, as we saw in the previous chapter, helps eliminate Shuten Dōji. Also by this time, the theme of motherhood in the yamauba legend comes to the forefront, as exemplified in the Kabuki/Puppet play entitled Komochi yamauba (Mountain Ogress with a Child, 1712) (see Chikamatsu, Chikamatsu jōruri shū 177–226). And in a complete inversion of imagery, in the late Edo period, yamauba comes to be portrayed as an alluring and seductive woman who, far from contemplating infanticide, is quite attached to her son, as exemplified in the works of Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806)."

[The choice of bold type is ours and not Ms. Reider's. We used it to bring attention to the endearing print by Utamaro in the Lyon Collection showing Yamauba shaving Kintarō's head.]

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On pages 62-63 Reider tells the story or origin of the modern view of Yamauba. "Let us return our attention to the medieval yamauba who is described in the Noh text as “a female oni dwelling in the mountains.” 0e archetypal yamauba figure appears in the story from the Konjaku monogatarishū. Alone and ashamed of her condition, the young pregnant woman journeys deep "