Spendor of Okinawa Bonus: A story from the Ryukyu Kingdom (Sunday: 31de23, Happy New Year!)
The Fool
There was once a young man named Sandaa living together with his mother in a certain place. Perhaps it was because of his easy-going or obedient nature, but, with his total lack of common sense, he appeared to one and all to be a complete fool.
One day, his mother said to him, “After you finish sowing the field with seeds, please make sure to shoo away the birds, so they don’t just eat them all up!”
Sandaa, good-natured as ever, rushed out to the field to take on both tasks. When the birds came along, after he had sowed the seeds, he chased them away, yelling, “Shoo, shoo, shoo!”, just as his mother had told him.
In the meantime, when the birds were not around, he rested and watched the leaves of the potato field sway in the wind. But, then he noticed that there were bugs all over the leaves.
So, just as when he chased away the birds, Sandaa began yelling, “Shoo, shoo, shoo! Get out of here, you nasty bugs!” Of course, that was not likely to move the bugs. So, Sandaa finally tired of the job and went home.
Once home, Sandaa complained to his mother, “Mom, I chased away the birds. But then there were bugs in the potato field. No matter how hard I yelled, “Shoo, shoo,” those things wouldn’t go away.”
Sandaa’s mother was stunned speechless at the stupidity of her son’s words. Then with a frown, she gave him a good tongue lashing, “You idiot, Do you think bugs will run away from a human voice? You have to whip them away with a switch.”
So, the next day, off went Sandaa, bamboo switch in hand, as he set off for his field. Along the way, there was a bald old man walking in front of him. Sandaa could not stop chuckling when he discovered a fly on the old man’s bald head. “Hah, Fly on your head! Fly on your head! Don’t move!” Sandaa shouted in warning and, in a flash, whacked the fly on the old man’s head with the bamboo switch.
When Sandaa got home, he again complained, “Mom, there was a fly sitting on a bald guy’s head, and I did just what you told me to. I whacked it with my switch.” “What did you just say?” said his shocked mother with a scowl. “On top of that, the old man gave me a wicked beating,” he continued.
After hearing Sandaa’s story, his mother just held her head in her hands, took a deep breath and said, “Sandaa, in a case like that you should use a fan and just fan the fly away. You probably hurt the old man! You do you understand, don’t you?”
The very next day, Sandaa went to a relative’s house on business for his mother. Since that day was very hot, Sandaa left home carrying a fan. On the way, he came across a fire in the woods on a little hill. It was the utaki (sacred ground) where the village deity was worshiped.
People were shouting, “Fire, fire! Our utaki is on fire!” and “Water! Quick, bring water!” The villagers worked diligently together and doused the burning trees with buckets of water. Some went for more help, others brought water from the well, and there was a lot of panic up and down around the utaki.
With the sparks from the fire crackling and flying around everywhere, Sandaa started flapping away with his fan at the sparks—thinking who knows what—but in fact fanning them. The villagers shouted, “Who the devil is this idiot?” and “Stop that! Are you crazy?”
But Sandaa, without blinking an eye, just kept fanning away with all his might. Just then, what began as a few drops of rain, turned into a downpour and came falling down like a waterfall. Thanks to this evening shower, the fire was completely extinguished. If it had not been for the rain, it would have become a huge forest fire.
After the villagers had cooled down from the panic of the fire, as might well be expected, Sandaa got a very hot beating from them. Sandaa had insanely thought that the sparks were like flies. So, he had tried to fan them away.
They say that after hearing that story, Sandaa’s mother just snuggled up in bed and slept for three days and three nights straight.
Of course during this time, Sandaa just wandered around his field, fan and bamboo switch in his hands, grumbling, “Even though I always, always, do just what Mom tells me, how come everyone gets mad at me anyway?”
In this world, if a man can be a fool, he will be.
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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