Spendor of Okinawa Bonus: A story from the Ryukyu Kingdom (29oc23)

 

The Origin of Demon Muuchii

 

A long time ago in a village deep in the mountains, a brother and his little sister, who were orphaned as children, lived together. While the brother was a violent type, his sister was kind-hearted. The brother would get into fights and drink, and once drinking, would go looking for more fights. As for the sister, as there were only the two of them, she always prayed in her heart that her brother would someday become a true man. Meanwhile, she did his share of the work as well as her own.

But could her brother really turn good? Never!  Rather, he went from bad to worse. Then one day, after his sister had pleaded with him to give up his evil ways, the brother told her she was nothing but a noisy shrew, smashed his sake bottle into pieces, went off somewhere or other, and vanished completely.

After about a half year or so had passed, in the dark of night a demon started coming down from the mountains and to eat the villagers’ chickens, goats, and pigs. The demon even went so far as to carry off village children. Nobody knew where exactly this demon had come from or exactly where he had set himself up way back in the mountains, probably in a cave. The villagers were so afraid of the demon that they wouldn’t think of setting foot outdoors after nightfall.

When news of the demon reached the ears of the sister, she realized that the demon actually was her brother. That was because one evening before her brother vanished, she had seen him from behind, disgustedly stuffing a live chicken into his mouth. She understood then that evil had totally consumed her brother.

Every time she heard stories of the demon, she felt pain in her heart and thought to herself, “Things can’t stay like this.” Even her neighbors in the village were beginning to suspect  her brother was the demon. While blaming herself, she also bore a grudge against him.

Finally, the sister decided that she herself must do something about her brother. Whether awake or asleep, she kept considering ways to get rid of this menace. 

Then one morning, after clasping her hands together in prayer at her home’s shrine, the sister made her brother’s favorite food, muuchii (cake made from steamed and pounded rice), and set off for the cave where the demon lived. But this muuchii wasn’t just ordinary muuchii wrapped in fragrant green san-nin (Alpinia zerumbet) leaves. The sister had hidden iron nails inside the muuchii to kill the demon, her own brother.

 

As the sister headed along the mountain paths her face was pale. But when she caught sight of the demon’s cave, perhaps because her heart had frozen in determination, she was at last able to calm her trembling body back to almost normal.

“Brother, it’s me.”, she called out in a loud voice.

At his sister’s voice, the demon appeared, lumbering out of his cave. His hair and beard had grown uncontrolled, and his sister saw sharp fangs sticking out of the mouth of his reddened face. But, she knew in the blink of an eye that this was her brother.

“You, huh? Just when I’m getting hungry,” the demon said as he greedily reached out his big hands to get her.

“W…wait! I’ve brought your favorite muuchii,” she cried.

 

“Well now. For that, we’ll be thankful,” he replied. “But where’s the muuchii?”

“I thought you’d like to eat it in a place with a good view,” she said. “So, I left it up on the cliff over there.”

Hearing his sister’s reply, the demon’s eyes widened suspiciously, but, at the prospect of eating his favorite muuchii, he set off at a trot in the direction of the cliff.

The demon sat cross-legged at the edge of the cliff, and, perhaps because he was quite hungry, he stuffed the whole ball of muuchii right into his mouth and swallowed it whole. The nails went straight into his belly and he screamed, his face grimaced in pain. The demon rolled violently on the ground in terrible suffering.

The sister stepped back from the cloud of dust stirred up by the demon writhing in torment. But then, thinking that she had come this far, the sister ran up behind her demon brother and pushed him off the cliff The demon screamed with a cry that could not be of this world, “Waah!”, and ended his life on the rocks below.

It is said that the sister,weeping and looking down to the bottom of the cliff, clasped her hands together in prayer for the longest time.Some also say that she spent the rest of her life unmarried, as a yuta, a nun..

In the old Ryukyu calendar, 8 December was “Demon Suppression Day.” Even now on that day in Okinawa, people make muuchii wrapped in san-nin leaves and pray especially for the health of their children. In fact, the event is still  called “Muuchii.”

 Note on pronunciation: Okinawan consonants sound much the same as their alphabetical counterparts in English. Vowels follow the sounds of the a,e,i,o,u of Italian or Spanish. Doubling means that the vowel is lengthened, not repeated.

 

Story: compiled and written in Japanese by Kyoko Ishikawa. English translation by William A. O’Donnell (odomnail@rocketmail.com), edited by Thomas Marsh.