If you had to choose between marrying someone you hate, or death, which would you choose?
Today on Folktales for Dummies, we tell the tale of Okiku (お菊), the woman who was
the inspiration for that cute girl in The Ring.
Okiku’s story is one of Japan’s 3 great ghost stories, making her one of the 3 great
ghosts.
The others are Otsuyu and Oiwa, who I’ve already made videos about.
This story has been told countless times in many different forms.
So here goes another time, in another form.
Okiku was a servant who washed dishes in Himeji Castle.
When Okiku entered the castle’s service, she saw all kinds of treasures that the lord
there kept, but the most valuable were a set of 10 expensive plates.
The lord of the castle used them to entertain high ranking guests.
She knew she had to be careful with the plates.
If she happened to chip one while washing, the lord would have her head.
The dishwasher Okiku was beautiful and caught the eye of many of the samurai in the castle.
One samurai by the name of Aoyama (青山) had a dreadful thirst that could only be quenched
by a piece of Okiku.
He made his intentions clear to her, but all his charms could not convince her.
Everyday he tried, and everyday she rebuffed him.
Finally, the frustrated Aoyama switched tactics.
If charm didn’t work, he would try trickery, which often works.
Aoyama stole one of the 10 plates, then he confronted poor Okiku and demanded to know
why it was missing.
Okiku was terrified.
She counted the plates.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.”
She kept on recounting and kept on arriving at the same number.
“The lord would surely kill me now,” she said.
But Aoyama came to the rescue.
He said he would tell the lord that it wasn’t her who lost the plate, provided she became
his lover.
Okiku, afraid for her life, said…
“No.”
Even in the face of death, she rejected him.
Aoyama went crazy.
He ordered his men to beat her, then tie her suspended above a well.
Okiku suffered Aoyama’s wrath as he repeatedly dunked her into the well water, only bringing
her up to beat her and ask her to become his woman.
This was unconvincing, so Okiku kept refusing.
Finally, Aoyama had enough and dropped her down the well and left.
No one would miss a servant girl.
Now normally, a person’s spirit was thought to pass on from the physical world after death,
but strong emotions might keep a person’s spirit in the world of mortals.
If someone died unjustly, her vengeful spirit could stay to torment her murderer.
This type of ghost is called an onryo (怨霊), or a vengeful spirit, and it’s what Okiku
became after she died.
An onryo is driven by vengeance and can hurt or kill people.
It can even cause disasters like earthquakes and famine.
One night, Okiku’s mutilated form arose from her well to walk the castle halls, searching
for the missing plate.
She counted them out loud in a gasping voice.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.”
And then she let erupt from her mouth a piercing shriek that penetrated the castle walls.
And she did this every night.
Those who heard her count became ill, and those who heard her finish counting died soon
after.
Every night her screams tormented the murderous samurai Aoyama, he could not sleep.
The lord of the castle had to request the services of a Buddhist priest to rid them
of Okiku’s ghost.
How does one get rid of an onryo?
The priest was clever.
He waited until Okiku came by on her nightly haunting and listened to her count.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.”
The priest immediately yelled, “Ten!”
The menace evaporated from Okiku’s face, like she was relieved that someone had finally
found the missing plate.
She walked back to her well, never to return.
But some say that wasn’t the end of Okiku’s ghost.
In 1795, Japan had a problem with their wells.
When people pulled water from these old wells, they found bugs in the water.
The infestation spread to many wells.
The funny thing about these bugs was that their larva bodies looked like a person tied
up with rope, if you squint and drank a few cups of sake.
So people started calling them okiku mushi (お菊虫), or okiku bugs, believing them
to be part of her curse.
Some even believed they were Okiku reborn.
In truth, these were the larvae of the Chinese windmill butterfly.
We don’t why they made their homes in old wells that year, but like Okiku, they never
came back.
So... we passed 100,000 subs omgwtflmao.
Thank you so much everybody for watching and commenting and hating, I love each and everyone
of you like you were my melon princesses.
I love talking to you all.
It’s a shame I can’t respond to every person, but I am working on the cloning machine.
Any day now.
This channel started as a little hobby, but it kinda grew up… into a teenager that talks
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It’s really great to see so many people interested in Japanese history and culture.
And I hope you continue to watch.
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