Yamauba, the mountain witch [Japanese folklore; yokai]
High in the mountains of Japan, an old woman inhabits the wilderness. She is the Yamauba (also Yamamba), or the mountain hag. She makes her home far higher than what a mortal human could climb (as such, the Yamauba is often depicted with clouds in the background to convey altitude). When she finds people trying to climb her mountain peak, she attacks and devours them.
Physically, the Yamauba resembles a very old human woman with white hair and an unnaturally large mouth. Sometimes she is giant (about 10 ft or 3 m tall) and carries an iron staff. There is at least one story in which the crone is defeated and killed, upon which her corpse turns into carrots. One myth describes her origin as an old (human) woman who is evicted from her house by her own grandchildren after the death of her children. With nowhere to go, she leaves society to live in a secluded hut on a mountain. Eventually, she loses her humanity and becomes a demonic witch.
This crone is a common villain in children's stories, and she serves the role of a bogeyman character (sorry, bogeywoman): a malicious monster whose exploits are told to children to scare them into correct behaviour. In one old story, a pregnant woman is traversing a mountain. Knowing that she will give birth before she can make it back to society, she enters a lonely hut and finds it to be inhabited by an old woman. After giving birth, however, her host reveals herself to be a demon and tries to devour the newborn child.
The Yamauba is a hungry, ravenous force of destruction: in one story, she encounters a young fisherman transporting a large catch with his carriage. After halting the cart, the witch ravenously devours all the fish. Still hungry, she then proceeds to eat the oxen. The young man is alarmed by this, as it is atypical behaviour for elderly women to devour cattle whole, and he runs away before she eats him as well.
Despite this, though, the mountain witch is not always considered to be evil! Throughout the centuries, she evolved from a folklore monster into a benevolent entity. At one point, she would help humans living on the mountain with their work or chores, being a huge boon to lumberjacks or builders because of her supernatural strength. A 15th century Noh play, simply titled 'Yamauba', changed her role into that of a nature spirit of sorts. She is as ancient as the very mountains she inhabits, and it is her who brings the winter snow and who makes the blossoms bloom in spring.
In the 17th century, the character changed again to become the mother of Kintaro, a Japanese folk hero. She is associated with motherhood and birth. In one folktale, the Yamauba enters a human village when she is about to give birth, and asks for shelter and aid. After a married couple takes her in, she asks them to name the baby, and they feel honoured to do so. To reward their kindness, she gifts them two boxes: one is filled with yarn, the other with gold.
Sources: Reider, N. T., 2005, Yamauba: Representation of the Japanese Mountain Witch in the Muromachi and Edo Periods, International Journal of Asian Studies, 2(2), pp. 239-264. Doi:10.1017|S1479591405000112 Yoda, H. and Alt, M., 2016, Japandemonium Illustrated: the Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien, 319 pp., p. 13.
(Image source 1: Eric Belisle)
(Image source 2: Monika Eidentaite, artwork for The Field Guide to Witches)
(Image source 3: Toriyama Sekien, 1776)
