Shusuinosuke Tobe Suetake Meeting a Ghost with a Child

We see a famous samurai named Suetake as he experiences a strange encounter with a ghost known as an ubume. Ubume are known throughout Japanese folklore as the ghosts of women who have died while giving birth to their child. People feared these ghosts as they were known to steal newborn babies from their mothers and give them to travelers, which may be what this ubume was hoping to do when Suetake encountered her.

The ubume’s pale, emaciated appearance and the presence of mysterious wings tells us that this character is not a living woman, while the blood on her lower body tell us that she has died in childbirth. Yoshitoshi has illustrated the baby as fleshy and full of color, showing it is a living baby that the ghost has stolen.

Characters that are both frightening and tragic are an important element in frightening stories today. Why do you think this is? What do this image and the story it illustrates tell us about the perils of childbirth in pre-modern Japan, and the anxieties associated with it in Japanese society? Does this ghost pose any threat to the samurai Suetake?