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"The Form of a Demon and the Heart of a Person"
Edo-era prints of a loving demon with adopted or biological son.
Yet in early depictions, she is figured as a toothless crone, withered and white haired, the folds of her wrinkled skin and desiccated breasts collapsing into the pile of rags and stitched-together leaves that barely clothe her. A properly written oni character, as Zeami put it in his dramaturgical treatise The Three Ways( Sandō), should possess “the form of a demon and the heart of a person,” capable of moving “all present to an impression of the wondrous.” 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: miming shock when Kintaro disguises himself with a mask, reacting with good humor when he kneads her cheeks or clambers up her back.
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