Spendor of Okinawa Bonus: A story from the Ryukyu Kingdom (5no23)


The Legend of the Madan (True Jewel) Bridge Human Sacrifice

 

The bridge over the Kokuba River between Naha and Tomigusuku is called the Madan (True Jewel) Bridge. Originally it was a wooden bridge, but in 1707, during the reign of King Sho Tei, a stone bridge was built in its place. The current Madan Bridge was rebuilt after the destruction of the original during World War II.


When Madan Bridge was made of wood, it used to get washed away in every flood. So, the royal government decided to replace it with a strong stone bridge. A huge number of laborers were rounded up and the work began. However, the bridge pillars, which had been built with great effort, would collapse whenever there was a heavy rain, so the work made no progress. What is worse, this happened again and again. So one day the public officials, whose heads literally depended on the project, called on a yuta (a fortune-teller) and asked her to divine the problem.


“You must offer up a victim to the Water God,” she said. “Without a human pillar as a sacrifice, you can never complete the bridge. The victim must have been born in the Year of the Rat and moreover she must have her hair bound with a hair cord of seven colors. That’s the one who must be sacrificed to the Water God as a human pillar for the bridge.”


(Hair tied with a cord - motoyui )


The officials looked at each other astonished at the yuta’s words. But, with no other means available, they decided to set out to find such a woman to be the victim in the sacrifice. However, no matter how long they searched, they could not find a woman born in the Year of the Rat with her hair done up with a seven- colored hair cord. So, there was nothing to do but visit the yuta’s house and ask her to do her divination one more time.

       

Just then, the yuta was looking over some goods she had gotten from the villagers for her divinations. Among them she found a beautiful hair cord. Surprisingly, it was a seven-colored hair cord. It was made of silk and shone beautifully with each of the seven colors of the rainbow. “Ah, can there be a hair cord so beautiful anywhere in this world…?” she wondered. Not realizing that the officials were about to arrive, the yuta bound up her hair with the seven-colored hair-stay.

          

Then she heard the voices of the officials, “Anyone home?” Surprised, the yuta turned to the porch and let out a feeble scream, as if she had seen a ghost. In a panic, she undid the hair cord, but there was no way that the earnest officials could miss seeing it. “What? It’s a hair cord. A seven-colored hair cord!” said one official. “What’s this? Is the victim we’re searching for really the yuta herself?” said another.

        

When word had spread among the officials of the discovery, they grabbed the yuta and led her away. Crying out along the way in a wail that could reach the heavens, the fortune-teller was forced to admit that she was indeed also born in the Year of the Rat. That determined her fate.

          

The next day, the yuta, after saying goodbye to her only daughter, was buried alive in the river-bed, while a huge crowd watched. When she spotted her daughter again in the crowd assembled at the river bank, the yuta cried out in a loud voice, “No matter what happens, never speak in front of others.” Those were the yuta’s last words. After that, the yuta’s daughter never spoke to anyone unless it was absolutely necessary.

It is said that people who had seen the fate of the pitiful yuta and her daughter warned each other, “Munu yumi mun ya nma nu sachi yun (A chatterbox will step into a horse’s path).”        

 (Note:The power of life and death at the time belonged to the king alone. By asserting who should die as a sacrifice, the yuta had usurped his authority, stepped into the path of the king’s power.)

 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.

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