Yamauba and Kaidomaru

"Yamauba and Kaidomaru" (February 1873) depicts the legendary mountain witch Yamauba and her foster son Kaidomaru—the child who would grow up to become the warrior Sakata no Kintoki (Kintarō). The mountain mother and her supernatural son were celebrated subjects in Japanese art, the wild woman of the peaks nurturing a child of extraordinary physical power through isolation and communion with mountain animals and spirits. Yoshitoshi renders Yamauba with the ambiguous quality that made her such a compelling figure: simultaneously nurturing and fearsome, human and inhuman.