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The Ubume Challenge: A Digital Environmental Humanities Project

Critical Statement

This Scalar site applies an ecocritical lens to contextualize the ubume (“birthing-woman”), a figure who has appeared in Japanese folklore for centuries. One of many yōkai (supernatural creatures) said to signify the uncertainties of the land, the ubume first appeared in setsuwa (spoken stories), which largely depicted her as haunting the shadows found in rivers and under bridges. However, as we industrialized, so too did our fears, and the more worrisome environments became those that we created, both in cities and online. The ubume was adapted to fit these new environments, and on this website, I illustrate how by examining three of her most popular transmutations: the setsuwa collection Konjaku Monogatarishū, the illustrated encyclopedia Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, and the viral hoax “The Momo Challenge.”

Similar to our passing down of the ubume’s story, we have passed down the story of technology-as savior, one that enabled our age of the Anthropocene as much as it has enabled the ubume to become Momo. While we may not have always understood the extent to which humans impact the planet, there has been consistent uncertainties regarding industrialization—those uncertainties just did not belong to those with the dominant platform. I have created this site to give them one.

Because my first encounter with the ubume was through Momo, we begin and end in the United States with Momo as the guide to signify that the representations that follow are born through a Western lens. As my focus is on the environment, I created a comic sequence in which Momo serves as a symbol for the land, and the robots, industry. The goal here is not to present the ubume purely as a symbol of ecological fear; she is a figure capable of offering critical insight into numerous social and cultural factors. Rather, I followed one of the ubume’s many narratives, examined how that narrative functioned across different mediums and time periods, and deconstructed it as a means of multileveled communication.

In addition to expanding access beyond an academic audience, the reason I chose comics to relay the ubume’s transmodal trajectory is because of the form’s inherent subjectivity. Because Western civilization has long favored the written word and its relatively stable semiotic set over more pictographic forms of communication, text has been endowed with a false neutrality that tells readers to pay attention to the content, not the structure—or the fact that what they are reading has been constructed. Similarly, traditional data visualizations often rely on conventions that present observations as though they occurred independent of an observer. In each case, the role of the unreliable human author is minimized, and readers/viewers are deterred from necessary questioning: if the computer says we already found the answer, why look anywhere else?

While it may be tempting to believe that a graph or text without an apparent author is free from biases, that author is in there somewhere, and their lack of visibility does not reprieve us from the consequences of those biases but denies us the agency we need to interpret them. As a response, I prioritize authorial transparency. In this project, I take the stance of a narrative theorist, one that is informed by scholars such as Frederick Aldama, James Phelan, Angus Fletcher, and Jared Gardner. As Gardner states in the special issue of SubStance titled Graphic Narratives and Narrative Theory:

Narratology is in essence the science of making visible that which the majority of narratives work to make us forget. The line [of a comic] then epitomizes the challenge of a narrative mode that uniquely never lets us forget, in which the kind of immersive magic that seeks to demystify simply cannot happen. (66)

By incorporating original comics into my research, I remind readers of my presence and encourage them to decide for themselves whether they agree with my conclusions. Such agency on the part of the reader is crucial if we are to understand why certain histories are privileged over others, particularly in our current climate where the hands shaping our digital environments remain so largely hidden.

A Digital Humanities website might seem like a paradoxical choice for a project that heavily critiques our reliance on technology; however, that critique is not a condemnation. This Scalar site attempts to reach people where they are, and we cannot turn off all our devices now any more than we can rewind our clocks to undo all of their damages. One task we can take on is a task this Scalar site seeks to assist: we can ask ourselves why we know so little about a world we helped create.

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Critical Statement This Scalar site applies an ecocritical lens to contextualize the ubume (“birthing-woman”), a figure who has appeared in Japanese folklore for centuries. One of many yōkai (supernatural creatures) said to signify the uncertainties of the land, the ubume first appeared in setsuwa (spoken stories), which largely depicted her as haunting the shadows found in rivers and under bridges. However, as we industrialized, so too did our fears, and the more worrisome environments became those that we created, both in cities and online. The ubume was adapted to fit these new environments, and on this website, I illustrate how by examining three of her most popular transmutations: the setsuwa collection Konjaku Monogatarishū, the illustrated encyclopedia Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, and the viral hoax “The Momo Challenge.”

Similar to our passing down of the ubume’s story, we have passed down the story of technology-as savior, one that enabled our age of the Anthropocene as much as it has enabled the ubume to become Momo. While we may not have always understood the extent to which humans impact the planet, there has been consistent uncertainties regarding industrialization—those uncertainties just did not belong to those with the dominant platform. I have created this site to give them one.

Because my first encounter with the ubume was through Momo, we begin and end in the United States with Momo as the guide to signify that the representations that follow are born through a Western lens. As my focus is on the environment, I created a comic sequence in which Momo serves as a symbol for the land, and the robots, industry. The goal here is not to present the ubume purely as a symbol of ecological fear; she is a figure capable of offering critical insight into numerous social and cultural factors. Rather, I followed one of the ubume’s many narratives, examined how that narrative functioned across different mediums and time periods, and deconstructed it as a means of multileveled communication.

In addition to expanding access beyond an academic audience, the reason I chose comics to relay the ubume’s transmodal trajectory is because of the form’s inherent subjectivity. Because Western civilization has long favored the written word and its relatively stable semiotic set over more pictographic forms of communication, text has been endowed with a false neutrality that tells readers to pay attention to the content, not the structure—or the fact that what they are reading has been constructed. Similarly, traditional data visualizations often rely on conventions that present observations as though they occurred independent of an observer. In each case, the role of the unreliable human author is minimized, and readers/viewers are deterred from necessary questioning: if the computer says we already found the answer, why look anywhere else?

While it may be tempting to believe that a graph or text without an apparent author is free from biases, that author is in there somewhere, and their lack of visibility does not reprieve us from the consequences of those biases but denies us the agency we need to interpret them. As a response, I prioritize authorial transparency. In this project, I take the stance of a narrative theorist, one that is informed by scholars such as Frederick Aldama, James Phelan, Angus Fletcher, and Jared Gardner. As Gardner states in the special issue of SubStance titled Graphic Narratives and Narrative Theory:
Narratology is in essence the science of making visible that which the majority of narratives work to make us forget. The line [of a comic] then epitomizes the challenge of a narrative mode that uniquely never lets us forget, in which the kind of immersive magic that seeks to demystify simply cannot happen. (66)
By incorporating original comics into my research, I remind readers of my presence and encourage them to decide for themselves whether they agree with my conclusions. Such agency on the part of the reader is crucial if we are to understand why certain histories are privileged over others, particularly in our current climate where the hands shaping our digital environments remain so largely hidden.

A Digital Humanities website might seem like a paradoxical choice for a project that heavily critiques our reliance on technology; however, that critique is not a condemnation. This Scalar site attempts to reach people where they are, and we cannot turn off all our devices now any more than we can rewind our clocks to undo all of their damages. One task we can take on is a task this Scalar site seeks to assist: we can ask ourselves why we know so little about a world we helped create.

This page references:

Critical Statement