The mountain is strongly associated with the Ubasuteyama legend, which is mentioned in the Kokin Wakashū poetry anthology of 905 AD, indicating that the legend itself was much older. Per Japanese folklore, the pre-modern Japanese practiced senicide, whereby an infirm or elderly relative who were a burden on the community were taken to a remote, desolate place, and left there to die. The identification of Mount Kamuriki as this location appears to be from legends in the Yamato Monogatari (951 AD), the Sarashina Nikki (1059 AD), and the Konjaku Monogatarishū, (c.1120 AD) among others. The mountain has a landform (the Bokodaki Iwa), which resembles a person carrying another person on his back up the mountain.