Ubasute
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (February 2009) |
Ubasute (姥捨て, "abandoning an old woman"; also called obasute and sometimes oyasute 親捨て "abandoning a parent") is a mythical practice of senicide in Japan, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die.[1] Kunio Yanagita concluded that the ubasute folklore comes from India's Buddhist mythology.[2] According to the Kodansha Illustrated Encyclopedia of Japan, ubasute "is the subject of legend, but…does not seem ever to have been a common custom."[3]
Folklore
[edit | edit source]In one Buddhist allegory, a son carries his mother up a mountain on his back. During the journey, she stretches out her arms, catching the twigs and scattering them in their wake, so that her son will be able to find the way home.
A poem commemorates the story:
In the depths of the mountains,
Whom was it for the aged mother snapped
One twig after another?
Heedless of herself
She did so
For the sake of her son
In popular culture
[edit | edit source]- The practice of ubasute is explored at length in the Japanese novel The Ballad of Narayama (1956) by Shichirō Fukazawa. The novel was the basis for three films: Keisuke Kinoshita's The Ballad of Narayama (1958), Korean director Kim Ki-young's Goryeojang (1963), and Shohei Imamura's The Ballad of Narayama, which won the Palme d'Or in 1983.
- Ubasute is mentioned in the 2016 American horror film The Forest, as an explanation for why locals believe that the Aokigahara forest is haunted by vengeful wraiths (yūrei).
Places
[edit | edit source]
- Ubasute-yama (姨捨山) is the common name of Kamuriki-yama (冠着山), a mountain (1,252 metres or 4,108 feet) in Chikuma, Nagano, Japan.[4][5]
- Obasute Station, Chikuma, Nagano Prefecture, Japan
- According to folklore, the Aokigahara forest at the base of Mount Fuji was once such a site, where its reputation as a suicide site might have originated.[6]
See also
[edit | edit source]References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value)..
- ^ Hoffman
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
Further reading
[edit | edit source]- Japan, An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo, 1993, p. 1121
External links
[edit | edit source]- What Japan can Offer to International Bioethics
- Folktale in Japanese, English version: [1]
Lua error in Module:Coordinates at line 489: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).