Spendor of Okinawa Bonus: A story from the Ryukyu Kingdom (12no23)
The Sorrowful Plover
Old man Mankuwa was a sturdy Itoman fisherman. But recently he had not gone out fishing. In his loneliness, he just looked aimlessly out to sea. But there was nothing he could do about it. Mankuwa’s cherished only son had been swallowed up by the raging sea in a typhoon three months before.
“Even if I had whacked him good, I couldn’t have kept him home that day. The adventure of fishing was in his blood,” Mankuwa lamented.
Mankuwa wiped around his eyes with his fists, and by and by started back to his house. It was then that he saw a plover along the shore writhing and pitifully flapping its wings.
(A plover – from Wikipedia)
When Mankuwa approached to check, he saw that the plover’s wing was wounded.“Oh, poor little thing! Where did you get that wound?” he said and cautiously picked up the plover in his hands taking it home to care for it.There he treated the wound. “Look, it’s okay. You’ll be back flying two or three days from now,” he promised.
On the morning of the third day, the plover’s wing was completely healed. So, Mankuwa set it free. The plover flapped its wings joyfully, circled above the house three times, chirped “Chee, chee, chee!” and then flew straight out to sea.
Some time passed. Then one day, when old man Mankuwa arrived home from fishing, the inside of his house had been perfectly tidied up and dinner had even been prepared for him. Thinking it strange, Mankuwa asked around the neighborhood, but it seemed none of the neighbors had stopped by to help him.
However, the same thing kept happening for several days. So, one day, Mankuwa hid in the shadow of a tree and peered intently into his house. A beautiful young woman, whom he had never even seen before, came along and began cleaning up his house.
With his head cocked suspiciously, Mankuwa called out to the woman from behind, “Hey, where are you from? Why are you doing this stuff for me? I don’t even know you!”
Startled by the sudden sound of his voice, the woman turned toward him and just stood there, confused.
“No, no!” he said. “I’m not angry. But you, do you know this old man from somewhere?”
When the young woman heard the kindness in Mankuwa’s voice, she returned to herself and explained, “I’m the plover that you helped. I came because I wanted to return the favor.” Then she chirped, “Chee, chee, chee!” just to remind him who she really was, the plover whom he had helped..
“Oh, so is that it? I’m so glad that you’re back in good health. But in that case, if it’s okay with you, could I ask you to stay here with me, though my house is only a shack?” Mankuwa asked this because his body felt wracked with loneliness with old age and the loss of his son..
The young woman agreed to Mankuwa’s request, but only if he firmly promised one thing. The promise that she asked was that Mankuwa would never divulge to anyone that she was really a plover.
The sight of Mankuwa looking far out to sea with a lonely face was no more. Meanwhile, as news of the young woman spread around the village, lovesick young men also showed up. However, the young woman only gave them a kind smile and never talked to anyone. But it caused concern in the village that a kind young woman like her could not speak, and the villagers thought, “What a pity!”
Then one night, a young man of the village, who was attracted to the beautiful woman, visited the house with a bottle of sake. Mankuwa and the young man shared around the sake, but the young woman politely left the room.
“Mr. Mankuwa, I’d like to make that lovely young lady my wife,” said the young man directly, with his honesty showing on his face.
Mankuwa shook his head no, saying, “She can’t marry and she’s comfortable with that.” Then he slowly poured himself another cup of sake. But the young man, perhaps on the strength of the sake, was not about to back off and said, “Why not? I like the girl. In fact I really love her!”
At that point, old man Mankuwa seemed troubled. But the young man pleaded, “Look, I don’t care even if she can’t speak. Mr. Mankuwa, I beg you, please let me marry her!”, his emotion all but bringing him to tears.”
At the sight of the heart-broken young man, Mankuwa revealed, “I’ve got my reasons. She can never marry you or anybody else.” Then, he carelessly blurted out the woman’s secret, “You see, she’s not really human. She’s actually a plover that I helped when she was injured!”
Suddenly aware of the promise he had broken, Mankuwa ran to the young woman’s room to apologize. But she was nowhere to be found. Just then, from the sky of the moonlit night, he could hear a sorrowful cry, “Chee, chee, chee!”
They say that old man Mankuwa passed away about half a year later.
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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