The Form of a Demon and the Heart of a Person: Kitagawa Utamaro's Prints of Yamauba and Kintarō

It remains a profound challenge to fully comprehend the internal landscape of the giantess Yamauba as she descends from her mountain crag to encounter the boy Kintarō. Folklore offers a multitude of conflicting narratives regarding her existence, creating a complex tapestry of myth. Some traditions assert that she craved the taste of human flesh, viewing humans as mere sustenance. Other legends claim that her very presence caused the buckwheat fields to turn a crimson red, signaling an unnatural disturbance in the natural world. Yet, within the perspective of the renowned Edo period print master Kitagawa Utamaro, she represented something entirely distinct from these terrifying archetypes that had dominated the cultural consciousness for centuries.

As a figure rooted in folklore and a prominent character in stage dramas, this wilderness-dwelling demoness had long inhabited the outer realms of Japan's popular imagination. Countless variations of her story have persisted over centuries, each adding layers to her enigmatic identity. Legends suggest she could curdle the day into night, deliver miraculous births of a new child every month, and summon violent storms through the physical exertion of her labor pains. However, in early artistic depictions, she was consistently drawn as a toothless crone, stripped of any humanity or beauty. She appeared as a withered, white-haired figure with folds of wrinkled skin and desiccated breasts collapsing into rags and stitched-together leaves that barely concealed her form.

It was the great dramatist Zeami, in a Noh play dedicated to Yamauba, who first softened her wild, bushy-wigged appearance with touches of Zen-inspired regret. His portrayal of Yamauba was one who was both acutely aware and deeply ashamed of her strange nature and ominous reputation. She pleaded with other characters to relay the truth about her to the world at large, seeking a connection that transcended her monstrous appearance. A properly written oni character, as Zeami articulated in his dramaturgical treatise The Three Ways (Sandō), should possess "the form of a demon and the heart of a person." Such a character must be capable of moving "all present to an impression of the wondrous," suggesting that true horror lies not in the grotesque, but in the human capacity for suffering and redemption.

By the time it was Utamaro's turn to portray Yamauba, she was already far along this transformative path in the cultural narrative. She was evolving from a wizened hag into a figure of loveliness and sympathy, shedding the skin of the cannibal for the mantle of the caregiver. She was no longer a remorseless eater of children but rather an unlikely model of maternal devotion. Yet, Utamaro's series marked the first time this new vision of Yamauba appeared in the visual arts. Of murky origins—birthplaces unknown and parentage uncertain—Utamaro would become one of the enduring masters of Japan's woodblock print tradition. At a time when many artists leaned heavily on typified notions of feminine grace, Utamaro made a name for himself through his refusal of the generic. This boundless curiosity, this impulse to push beyond received modes of depiction, is what accounts for the unique emotive force of his Yamauba and Kintarō images.

Utamaro's rendition both falls in with the broader cultural reconceptualization of Yamauba and transcends it. Across dozens of prints, he imagines her alongside Kintarō, the scarlet-skinned boy-hero who possesses superhuman strength. According to some accounts, Kintarō was her biological son, and according to others, he was an adoptee. In lieu of the dejection that pervades Zeami's vision of the demoness, what Utamaro offers us is Yamauba as the abiding symbol of parental patience. She mimics shock when Kintarō disguises himself with a mask, her reaction immediate and genuine. She reacts with good humor when he kneads her cheeks or climbs up her back, engaging in a playful dynamic that defies the typical monster-hero confrontation. The portrait format strains to accommodate the pair as they tussle, snuggle, and pull faces at each other in a world that seems to contain only the two of them, creating an intimate universe of their own.

In these prints, little remains to remind viewers of Yamauba's status as a social outcast. Only her untamed eyebrows and shaggy hair are left, rendered strand by strand in a true carver's coup de maître. One might well ask, looking at Yamauba's fine robes and delicate features, what, if any, of her original monstrousness remains. Indeed, some scholars, writing on the series, are content to explain Utamaro's depiction of a youthful Yamauba as a way of smuggling sensual content under the censor's nose. They point to several images where she is shown bare-chested as she breastfeeds her son or attends to her toilet. But these pieces constitute a minority of the series.

In any case, exposed breasts are not inherently erotic. What is more, Utamaro had no problem publishing much more explicit prints during his lifetime, yet he was never truly censored for that reason. Sometimes he used aliases that barely differed from his normal nom de pinceau. When the artist did finally run afoul of censorship toward the end of his life, in a much-publicized scandal that led to his brief imprisonment, it was for the political sensitivities of his work, not its salaciousness per se. This historical context suggests that interpreting his Yamauba primarily through a lens of voyeurism is a misreading of his artistic intent.

What is most lacking in this interpretation, however, is a recognition of the extraordinary sensitivity with which these prints observe the dynamic between the demoness and her son. It is love itself that is monstrous here. It is love itself that distorts Yamauba's features into a soot-toothed grin just as she permits her son to contort her flesh with his chubby-fingered hands. It is love that spills uncontrollably over the barriers between one person and another, ignoring social norms and physical boundaries. This love has the power to profane the sacred and follows its object unbidden, like a curse, even unto the hour of one's death. Utamaro saw that the line between the monster and the mother was thinner than anyone realized. He captured a moment where the terrifying form of the demon could not hide the beating heart of a parent.

The relationship between Yamauba and Kintarō in these prints defies the simple categories of hero and villain. They are not enemies locked in a struggle to the death, nor are they strangers passing in the night. They are a family, bound by a bond that transcends the boundaries of their supernatural origins. The prints show the boy growing stronger, his red skin glowing with vitality, while the giantess watches with a mixture of awe and tender concern. Her massive hands, capable of crushing boulders, move with the gentlest touch as she cradles him. This contrast between the size of the mother and the smallness of the child, between the potential for violence and the reality of care, creates a tension that is both powerful and moving.