Ubume.

Ubume (産女, うぶめ) appears as a woman who has died in childbirth and cannot fully leave the world of the living. In the best-known form she carries an infant or swaddled bundle through the night, her robe hanging loose like funerary white, her face exhausted, sorrowful, and only partly aware of the living person she approaches. Some accounts retain traces of blood or wet garments, but the stronger visual impression is maternal grief rather than bodily horror.

The image matters because it turns childbirth loss into a visible haunting. In some regional traditions ubume overlaps with bird-lore under the name ubumedori, yet the standard Edo and later representation is the ghostly mother with a child in her arms. She is frightening because she stands at the boundary between life and death, but also because she still performs the work of care after the body has failed.

Ubume often stops a passerby and asks that the child be held for a moment. Once the burden is accepted, the mother disappears and the baby becomes unnaturally heavy, sometimes seeming to turn into stone, Jizō imagery, or a soaked bundle that reveals the depth of the ghost's grief. The encounter is therefore not a simple attack. It is a transfer of obligation from the dead to the living.

Responses are usually ritual or compassionate rather than heroic. A prayer, proper memorial service, or safe care for the abandoned child can calm the haunting. Ubume belongs to the wider yūrei world, but unlike a pure onryō she is often tragic before she is vengeful, shaped by interrupted motherhood more than by formal revenge.