Yamamba as muse: Three poems by Noriko Mizuta

Japan’s beguiling mountain witch, the yamamba, has inspired artists from medieval Noh actors to contemporary poets. She offers a fertile metaphor for a creative energy that exceeds boundaries and threatens disruption. For female artists in particular, the yamamba epitomizes the freedom of refusing gendered expectations as well as the consequences that befall those who do. Renowned scholar and poet, Noriko Mizuta, has long found a muse in the yamamba. This article is excerpted and adapted from the book Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch, co-edited by Rebecca Copeland and Linda C. Ehrlich, which presents the surprising ways artists and scholars from North America and Japan have encountered the yamamba. Yamamba: In Search of the Japanese Mountain Witch is available June 22nd from Stone Bridge Press.