Okiku Well Legend

The Okiku Well tradition is the core tale of the kaidan "Banshu Sara-yashiki," handed down at Himeji Castle in Harima, in which a maid Okiku, accused of breaking one of a set of ten heirloom plates, is thrown into a well, and from then on her ghost rises by night from the bottom counting the plates "one... two..." but never reaches the tenth and weeps. Caught in the schemes of the domain vassal Aoyama Tessan, Okiku is falsely charged with disloyalty and falls into the well after torture; thereafter she counts plates to nine each night and sobs at the missing tenth. The well and the Bancho Sara-yashiki legend of Edo form the two great peaks of the plate-counting kaidan. The story has three stages: heirloom plates and the lord-and-vassal bond, the framing and unjust death, and the voice counting plates from the well and the haunting. The "missing tenth" structure carries the incompleteness of grudge in sound, and undergirded later theatrical reception. As a private form of goryo (vengeful-spirit) belief, the figure connects with grudge-pacification frameworks. The well in question is preserved next to the Himeji Castle keep, a World Heritage Site and National Treasure, on the visitor route. Asai Ryoi's Otogi Boko (Kanbun 6, 1666) carries an early related tale; the early-Edo joruri and kabuki "Banshu Sara-yashiki" (Kyoho era) settled the pattern, and Okamoto Kido's "Bancho Sara-yashiki" (Taisho 5, 1916) is the Edo line.