柳田國男
is the mythical practice of senicide in Japan, whereby an infirm or elderly relative was carried to a mountain, or some other remote, desolate place, and left there to die. Kunio Yanagita concluded that the origin of the ubasute folklore is Buddhist mythology from India. According to the Kodansha Illustrated Encyclopedia of Japan, "ubasute" "is the subject of legend, but… does not seem ever to have been a common custom".