Spendor of Okinawa Bonus: A story from the Ryukyu Kingdom (Sunday: 28ja24)

Akato’s Tiger Fight

           

To the east of Okinawa’s main island, there are lots of little islands dotting the sea. One of them, Tsuken Island, sits just off the tip of the Katsuren Peninsula.

          

A long time ago, an extremely strong young man called Akato (Red Man) lived on Tsuken Island. Because he could easily lift up even the biggest of men with one hand, his name was heard all over, even in the most distant islands.

(A sabani: an Okinawan fishing boat.)

          

One day as usual, Akato went fishing in his sabani a (small slim Okinawan fishing boat). All of a sudden a cyclone came along and hit his sabani twirling it up into the air. There was Akato, his teeth clenched, left clinging to a chunk of his sabani in the sea churned by the cyclone, and thinking that his life was over. “Nuts, am I going to give in and let myself drown in a place like this? No way!” he said to himself defiantly.

          

As he floated around aimlessly in the sea, Akato drank rainwater and stuffed fish that passed nearby into his mouth. After who knows how many days and nights, he reached a shore. He swam ashore and fell into a long sleep on the beach, as if he were dead. 

Dawn came and Akato was still asleep. When the sun went down and the stars began to come out, he finally opened his eyes. All around him were steep mountains. So he thought, “Around here there aren’t likely to be villages where people live. I’ll have to get over those tall mountains.”

          

Although still fatigued, Akato began climbing the mountains. After he went a little way, he heard the sound of flowing water and in the middle of a row of trees he saw a river gleaming in the rays of the moon. He thought, “I’m saved! My throat is really dry.”

          

Just as Akato bent down to drink some water. a tiger, growling like thunder from the depths of its belly, its fangs bared, came upon Akato. “Wow, you surprised me. You’re terribly big for a kitten, aren’t you?” said Akato, who had never in his life even heard of a tiger, let alone seen one. “Hey, what do you eat to get so incredibly big?”

          

The tiger tilted its neck and closed in on Akato, its head down. It circled a bit taking two or three steps back and then powerfully charged at him at a full run.

          

Skilled in karate, Akato faced the tiger with his waist lowered and whacked the tiger right on the forehead. The tiger stumbled back from the blow, deliberately retreated shaking his head right and left, and growled ferociously, obviously about to make another charge.

          

“You’re one really persistent kitten,” said Akato, still stunned by the tiger’s size, as he calmly went into his karate stance.

          

Using the power of its huge legs, the tiger silently came rushing at full speed at Akato. At the very moment that the tiger’s huge sharp fangs were in front of his eyes and about to sink in, Akato threw a sudden kick at the side of the tiger’s jaw. With a crunch of the sound of breaking bones, the tiger went down head over heels. Showering it with kick after violent kick, Akato made sure the tiger would not get back up.

          

Akato took a deep breath and stared at the tiger, no longer a cause for concern, and thought, “I’d love to show the people of my island just how big this  kitten was.” Then with the singing of mountain birds, dawn came.

          

The sight of Akato coming down the mountain with the tiger slung on his shoulders caused a big uproar among the people of the village at the foot of the mountain. A huge crowd of villagers buzzed noisily around Akato and it seemed like they would never calm down. Moreover, they were speaking a language that he did not know. Somehow or other, Akato had floated all the way to far off Korea.

          

After a while, an official who spoke the Ryukyu language came along. He told Akato that what he bagged was not a kitten, but a tiger, and a man-eater to boot. He added that the people of the village thanked him from the bottom of their hearts for what he had done. When the villagers further learned that he had killed the man-eating tiger with his bare hands, their eyes opened wide with surprise, and they proclaimed Akato their village hero.

         

Akato spent about a half year teaching the young men of the village the basics of karate. Then, in a stroke of good luck, a trade ship bound for Okinawa turned up. Akato got on it and left Korea behind.

         

When Akato got back to Tsuken Island, they say he proudly spread both hands wide to show to the islanders, who knew nothing of tigers, just how big the kitten that he killed was.

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.