Ubasute

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. Kunio Yanagita concluded that the ubasute folklore comes from India's Buddhist mythology. 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."

Folklore

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 popular culture

• 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 (yÅ«rei).

Places

• is the common name of , a mountain () in Chikuma, Nagano, Japan.
• 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.

See also

• Ättestupa
• Granny dumping
• Lapot

References

Further reading

• Japan, An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo, 1993, p. 1121

External links

• What Japan can Offer to International Bioethics
• Folktale in Japanese, English version: http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand-Gaien/7211/kudos6/ubasute.html