Mountain Witches

Mountain Witches is a comprehensive guide to the complex figure of yamauba—female yōkai often translated as mountain witches, who are commonly described as tall, enigmatic women with long hair, piercing eyes, and large mouths that open from ear to ear and who live in the mountains—and the evolution of their roles and significance in Japanese culture and society from the premodern era to the present. In recent years yamauba have attracted much attention among scholars of women's literature as women unconstrained by conformative norms or social expectations, but this is the first book to demonstrate how these figures contribute to folklore, Japanese studies, cultural studies, and gender studies.
Situating the yamauba within the construct of yōkai and archetypes, Noriko T. Reider investigates the yamauba attributes through the examination of narratives including folktales, literary works, legends, modern fiction, manga, and anime. She traces the...