by Yukimi Ogawa
Her step-mother took her beautiful clothes off, made her wear shabby clothes instead, took her to a distant country, and left her alone behind in a field.
After weeping for a long time, she began to wander around without any purpose until at last she reached a big river.
“It’s better to jump into the river to die than to keep walking aimlessly. I’d like to see my dead mother again in the other world.”
She jumped into the river, but because she wore the big wooden bowl on her head, she couldn’t sink deep in the water, but floated down the river.
A young man on a boat happened to find her and picked her up. He was one of the four sons of the lord.
He said to her, “Where are you from? And who are you?”
She answered the man, “I lived a little far from here. After my mother passed away, nobody cared about me. Nobody liked a handicapped girl like me. So I jumped into the river to kill myself.”
He tried to remove the bowl from her head, but it was impossible.
“Do you want to work at my house? Do you have any specialty to work?”
“I have nothing to boast about, but when my mother was alive, I learned music, and to read books and sutras from her.”
“So how about working as a bath attendant in my house?”
Since then, she worked hard at the lord’s: she cleaned the bathtub, made fire woods, and prepared the bath from early morning to late night.
Part II—Fortune
One day when the young man took a bath and the girl scrubbed his back with a washcloth, he happened to peep at her face covered with the wooden bowl. He didn’t expect to see such cute round eyes.
“She is the most attractive girl I’ve ever seen. I’ll make her my wife,” he inwardly decided.
The two gradually got along well with each other. His mother, who knew her son’s decision, of course got against their marriage.
“We don’t even know where she was born and raised. Oh...that ugly wooden bowl she is wearing! I’m afraid your marriage wouldn’t go well. I can’t understand why you have chosen her of all women,” she complained.
The young man said, “I understand why you object to our marriage. But whatever may happen, I’ll marry her. If you drive her out of here, I’ll also leave with her.”
The worried mother planned to have a ‘Bride-Contest’ to compare her youngest son’s fiance to the wives of her three sons, so that the ugly young woman would feel ashamed and leave from the house on her own initiative.
The handicapped young woman said to her fiance, “I’m so sorry to say that I have to leave here soon. I’m sure you’ll find a much better woman than I.”
“Don’t tell me such a wistful thing. I love you better than anyone else in the world. I’ll live with you until our death separates us.”
The moment he said so, the wooden bowl fell down in front of her. He was fascinated with her beauty: a fair-complexion with lovely round eyes; long black hair and ... he gazed at her speechlessly for a while. What’s more, in the box she had had on her head a moment before, they found treasures such as gold, silver, beautiful clothes and rolls of silk cloth!
“You don’t need to go anywhere,” he said to her gently.
The ‘Bride Contest’ started at last. First, the eldest son’s wife appeared in front of their relatives. She was a beautiful woman with long hair. She brought five rolls of silk cloth with her as the guests’ gifts. Next, the second son’s elegant wife appeared. She also brought five rolls of cloth. And then the cute third son’s wife showed up with five rolls. The relatives said to one another, “We’ve already seen three son’s wives. Each of them is so beautiful, hardly to say which is the best. Now it’s the turn for the youngest son’s fiance, but I wonder if she has the courage to appear in front of us.”
At last the slide door opened. Quietly and gracefully she walked into the room with five rolls of silk cloth. In a beautiful kimono, she looked so elegant and bright as if she had been the spirit of cherry blossoms under the spring sunshine. She was polite in manner, too; quite different from that bath attendant working everyday. All the people in the room watched her without a blink. The former three women were all beautiful, but in her presence, they paled by comparison. Soon there took place a splendid banquet. During the banquet, the three wives murmured with each other. The eldest son’s wife said to their parents-in-law, “I think it’s time to show our specialty to the guests. I’ll play the biwa, the second son’s wife, the tsuzumi, and the third son’s wife, the sho.” Then she turned to the youngest woman, and said, “So would you mind playing the koto with us?”
“I don’t think I can play the koto well in front of the guests, but if you insist, I’ll try,” she said modestly.
To their surprise, she finished playing a difficult piece perfectly. All the people there cried out in admiration. Then the three women gathered again and talked about something. The second wife approached her and said, “Look at the garden. How beautiful the cherry blossoms are! Would you mind writing a waka poem for us?”
“I don’t think I can please you with my poem, but if you insist, I’ll try.”
After a while of thought, she started writing a poem with beautiful handwriting on a strip of paper, and read it in a clear voice.
Although the cherry blossoms can’t speak to you,
Listen to what they say with your inner ears.
If you endure through all the hardships,
In the future, you’ll surely have good years.
The young man’s parents sympathized with her, thinking about her hardships she’d had to go through. They recognized not only she was elegant and beautiful, but also well-educated, qualified enough to their son’s bride. Though the young woman had never confessed her background, they thought there wasn’t any barrier for their marriage any more.
Soon she had three children and lived a happy life with her husband. One thing she felt anxious about was her father. She heard from someone that her father had left his family to train himself as a priest and wander somewhere, and that the main reason he had decided to be a priest was his second wife’s ruthlessness and careless spending. She wanted to look for her poor old father and show him his grandchildren.
Meanwhile, the priest prayed to Kannon wherever he visited temples, “If my daughter is still alive, I’d like to meet her again, and apologize for my stupidity.”
One day, he was praying at a temple, when he saw a man with three children walking toward him. Looking at them, he burst into tears. The man was surprised and asked the priest, “What makes you cry?”
“Please don’t mind my crying, but your children bear a striking likeness to my daughter whom I ran out of my house when she was thirteen years old.”
The old priest told the whole story to the man, who sympathized with the priest. When the man took the priest to his house, his wife gazed at him for a while, and shouted with joy, “Oh, Father, I’m your daughter. Look, he is my husband, and they are your grandchildren.”
“I must be in a dream,” the priest said, “If not, I have to thank Kannon for rejoining my daughter.”
He was welcomed by his daughter’s family, and lived with them happily ever after.
— “A Girl with a Bowl on Her Head” translated by Masahiro Kudo
A Chat with Yukimi Ogawa
In Her Head, In Her Eyes is a retelling of the Japanese fairy tale “Hachikaduki” (in English, “A Girl with a Bowl on her Head”). Is “Hachikaduki” a popular, well-known story in Japan? What made you choose this specific fable? Are there any particular themes in this story that you wanted to explore and subvert in your version?
The tale is included in a very famous collection of Japanese old fairytales, but I suspect half the people know about this particular tale, “Hachikaduki.” I had read the simple version of the tale when I was a student, and it stuck in my mind as a very absurd story. Why a pot on her head? Why does no one, even her own father, ever listen to Hase when her stepmother tr
ies to expel her from their home? I thought that reading the older version might give me some clues as to deeper motivations for these characters—but when I was done reading the older “Hachikaduki” tale, I had even more questions. One of them was “Would Hase be really happy married to this man, living in a house where everybody had bullied her?”
I wanted my Hase to be happy. But how could she, in a house where everyone was her enemy? I think this story started here.
Speaking of fairy tales, are you a fairy tale enthusiast? Do you have any favorites you’d like to share with our readers? Conversely, do you have a least favorite fairy tale (you must also tell us why, of course).
I do enjoy fairytales, but more than that, I love learning about folklore monsters, yokai. I love folklorist Kunio Yanagida’s studies; I love Sekien Toriyama’s imaginative paintings of those monsters. I’m not sure why, but there are not enough fairytales featuring yokai!
We’d love to hear about your experience writing short stories, particularly as you are a Japanese author living in Japan. Your fiction has appeared in places like Strange Horizons and Expanded Horizons—what would you say are the advantages and potential pitfalls of writing short stories? How has your experience been writing stories in English? Do you also have stories published in Japanese?
Writing shorter things and exploring many different settings and characters, many yokai monsters, is just so much fun! It’s also easier for me, because I tend to get very tired when I try to make my brain work in English for a long time. But sometimes I do feel like exploring a character, a world, more extensively—that’s happening right now to me with the Island in this story. It’s the same island on which my story published in the March issue of Ideomancer Speculative Fiction was set. But I’m not sure if my English is good enough for anything longer—oh, the dilemma!
I’ve had a few short stories published in Japanese, but that was before I started studying English seriously. At some point I gave up on writing fiction in Japanese, choosing English instead as my story-telling language after majoring in linguistics at college. I think the rhythm of the language was just right for me. Some people ask me if I write stories in Japanese and then translate them into English later, but I don’t do that; my brain works in English (however incompetent) when I write fiction. I can no longer write stories in Japanese—I don’t even read books in Japanese these days, except for those about yokai studies.
What are you working on next?
A couple of stories about yokai, and one about gemstones. (I love gemstones.) And always, seeking to improve my English!
Finally, a question we ask all of our interviewees: We Book Smugglers are faced with constant threats and criticisms from our significant others concerning the sheer volume of books we purchase and read—hence, we have resorted to ‘smuggling books’ home to escape scrutinizing eyes. Have you ever had to smuggle books?
No, I don’t think so. People never cared that much about what I read, especially after I started reading books in English. Sometimes I feel a bit lonely about that, but is it any better than having to smuggle books home…?
About the Author
Yukimi Ogawa lives in a small town in Tokyo where she writes in English but never speaks the language. One of her stories was picked up for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014.
Book Smugglers Publishing
Book Smugglers Publishing: Fall 2014
Hunting Monsters by S.L. Huang (10/7/2014)
In Her Head, In Her Eyes by Yukimi Ogawa (10/21/2014)
Mrs. Yaga by Michal Wojcik (11/4/2014)
The Mussel Eater by Octavia Cade (11/18/2014)
The Astronomer Who Met the North Wind by Kate Hall (12/2/2014)
The Ninety-Ninth Bride by Catherine F. King (12/16/2014)
For other original & subversive fairy tales, visit goo.gl/v2crPj.
Copyright Information
In Her Head, In Her Eyes
Published by Book Smugglers Publishing
Copyright © 2014 Yukimi Ogawa
Cover Illustration by Jacqueline Pytyck
Translation of “A Girl with a Bowl on Her Head” courtesy of Masahiro Kudo
