Speculative fiction writer, long-term resident of Japan and Bram Stoker Award finalist Thersa Matsuura explores all that is weird from old Japan—strange superstitions, folktales, cultural oddities, and interesting language quirks. These are little treasures she digs up while doing research for her writing.
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episode 17: Granny Dumping Mountain (Ubasute Yama)
This month on Uncanny Japan I talk about Ubasuta Yama (姥捨山) or Granny Dumping Mountain. Back in old Japan when times were tough and there were too many mouths for one family to feed, they might do something called kuchi herashi (口減らし) or getting rid of mouths. One way to do this was to send one (or more) of your children to live with a wealthier family. Another way to cut down on the number of mouths that needed to be fed was to haul grandma or grandpa up into the mountains and leave them to fend for themselves. Some say it's just a folktale, others say why of course this happened! What do you think?
ETA: The station in Nagano is Ubasute Eki (姨捨駅). I mention in the podcast that the first character for uba is little sister. I was wrong, it's 'aunt'. So throwing away aunts. Who I am supposing are older than little sisters.
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