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OKIKU'S WELL, JAPAN

 By Nicole Panken

Looming over the surrounding city of Himeji, in Hyogo Prefecture, Himeji Castle would be an impressive enough sight without the added lure of a spookily famous well contained within its massive grounds.
Ghost Stories are a popular subject of Japanese woodblock prints. The ghost story of Okiku, an unfortunate servant maid, is one of the best known and was transformed into a Kabuki play and numerous novels.
Kabuki (歌舞伎) is a classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate keishi/keishomake-up worn by some of its performers.
Kabuki is considered to have begun in 1603 when Izumo no Okuni formed a female dance troupe to perform dances and light sketches in Kyoto, but developed into an all-male theatrical form after females were banned from kabuki theatre in 1629. This form of theatre was perfected in the late 17th and mid-18th century.
In 2005, the "Kabuki theatre" was proclaimed by UNESCO as an intangible heritage possessing outstanding universal value. In 2008, it was inscribed in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Bancho Sarayashiki
In the kabuki play Bancho Sarayashiki, Okiku is a maid at the mansion of the Japanese samurai Tessan Aoyama. The samurai wants to seduce the cute girl but she rejects his advances. Aoyama uses a trick. He hides one of ten valuable Dutch plates and threatens Okiku to make public that she had stolen the plate unless she agrees to become his mistress. In her desperation Okiku throws herself into the well and drowns.
Okiku's ghost comes out every night, counting from one to nine and then breaks out into a terrible howling and sobbing. Finally Aoyama goes insane by the daily apparitions at night.
Different Versions of the Ghost Story of Okiku
There are different versions of the ghost story of Okiku. What they all have in common is the description of her ghost coming out of the well and counting from one to nine and then breaking out into a heart-rendering sobbing.
In another version, Okiku really breaks a plate and is killed by her master and her corpse is thrown into the well.
In yet another version, it is the wife of Aoyama, who breaks the plate. To hide her guilt, she throws the broken plate into the well and accuses Okiku of having it stolen. In this version she is also killed by her master for punishment and thrown into the well.
There is also an alternate version for the end of the story. To stop the nightly sobbing, a friend of the family of Aoyama is hired. He is hiding at the well during the night and after Okiku had counted from one to nine, he is stepping forward shouting loudly "ten". From then on the ghost of Okiku was never seen again.
The Himeji Castle Version
One of the tourist attractions on Himeji Castle is Okiku's well. In the Himeji version, Okiku was a servant of Aoyama, a retainer who planned a plot against his lord. Okiku overheard the plot and reported it to her lover, a loyal warrior. The plot was averted.
When Aoyama found out that Okiku had been the cause for his failure, he decided to kill her. So he accused her of having stolen one of ten valuable dishes. She was tortured to death and thrown into the well.
Okiku's well on Himeji Castle is in competition with another location of the well, the garden of the Canadian embassy in Tokyo - established on land bought from the Aoyama family. Looks like there are at least as many locations of the well of the poor girl as there are different versions of her story.
All the variations of the ghost story of Okiku have an extremely wrongful and cruel treatment of a poor girl of the lower classes in common. But different from the ghost story of Yotsuya, revenge towards the tormentor is not the big Leitmotiv (apart from one variation of the story).

Okiku's story has remained popular in Japan, inspiring stage productions, video games, and horror film Ringu, as well as its American remake, The Ring. The well where she's said to have drowned remains at Himeji Castle ... along with (maybe) her ghost.








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