Yamauba Nagano Legend

The Nagano yamauba (or yamanba) legend tells of an oni-woman who lives in a single house in the deep mountains and, after feigning hospitality, devours travellers who lose their way. In the Nagano tradition, a traveller lost on a steep pass in the heart of Shinano finds a lighted hut and asks for shelter; in the night he hears the sound of a knife being sharpened in the kitchen, and the muttered words 'tomorrow's breakfast will be this traveller.' Slipping out at a chance, he flees. The yamauba shifts to an oni's aspect and gives chase, but is shaken off by a stream, by chanted prayers or by a sprig of plum. The cycle was widely varied in later noh, joruri and folktales, including Ushi-kata Yamanba and Tendo-san Kane no Kusari. The structure has three parts: hospitality and detection in the mountain hut; flight and pursuit by the yamauba; and shaking-off at a boundary (stream, prayer, plum branch) and return. With the related oni-baba and oni-woman cycles (Adachigahara's oni-baba and others), it forms a sequence, and as a yamauba tradition tied to the mountain-cult area of Nagano it stands at the core of mountain-boundary yokai. In the noh play Yamanba an old-woman form is given the maternal aspect of a mountain spirit roaming the deep mountains, presenting the double aspect of the figure. The setting includes the mountain roads and passes of northern Shinano (Togakushi and Iizuna areas), eastern Shinano (Asama foothills) and southern Shinano (Southern Alps foothills) in Nagano. The cycle joins the sacred ground of Myoko and Togakushi mountain worship and is representative of Shinano mountain yokai. Variants are widely distributed in Joetsu (Niigata), eastern Toyama, and Hida (Gifu). Sources include the noh play Yamanba (attributed to Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu, late Muromachi) and medieval-to-early-modern sekkyobushi and tale collections such as Shintoku-maru and Yamanba Soshi. Yanagita Kunio's Yama no Jinsei and Tono Monogatari Shui, the folklore volume of the Nagano prefectural history and Shinano folklore studies preserve regional variants.