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 f...