[x]

Browse More Like This

Shop Similar Prints
This Print Not Available more ▶

More from *SamWolk

View Gallery · View Prints

Featured in Groups:

Not currently featured in any groups.

Details

Submitted: January 29, 2012
Image Size: 944 KB
Resolution: 900×1123

Link

Thumb

Statistics

Comments: 0
Favourites: 3 [who?]
Views: 76 (0 today)

[x]

Alphabeasts Week XVby *SamWolk

Traditional Art / Drawings / Macabre & Horror

It's time for another weekly alphabetical project! Instead of living, breathing animals, we're now doing an A-to-Z of mythical creatures and fictional monsters called ALPHABEASTS!

There are a lot of female spectral horrors which invade one's nightmares in Japanese folklore; the spirits which find no peace in eternal sleep. One such tortured soul is Okiku, from the story Banchō Sarayashiki. Here's a synopsis from an About.com article.

Okiku works as a maid at the home of the samurai Tessan Aoyama. One day while cleaning a collection of ten precious ceramic plates, which is a family treasure, she accidentally breaks one of them. The outraged Aoyama kills her and throws the corpse into an old well. Every night afterwards, Okiku's ghost rises from the well, slowly counts out nine plates and then breaks into heartrending sobs, over and over and over again, tormenting the samurai. Finally, vengeance is wrought when Aoyama goes insane.

As is prone to occur over time with any legend, details and characters change. Just look at the difference between the original and the remake of "The Taking of Pelham 123" for example. In another version of her tale, (from the Wikipedia page) she often refused Aoyama's amorous advances toward her. He was thus compelled to trick her into believing that she had carelessly lost one of the family's ten precious plates. Such a crime would normally result in her death.

She frantically counted and recounted the nine plates many times, but could not find the tenth and went to Aoyama in guilty tears. The samurai offered to overlook the matter if she finally became his lover, but again she refused. Enraged, Aoyama threw her down a well to her death.

It is said that Okiku became a vengeful spirit who tormented her murderer by counting to nine and then making a terrible shriek to represent the missing tenth plate – or perhaps she had tormented herself and was still trying to find the tenth plate but cried out in agony when she never could. In some versions of the story, this torment continued until an exorcist or neighbor shouted "ten" in a loud voice at the end of her count. Her ghost, finally relieved that someone had found the plate for her, haunted the samurai no more.

In any case, she's not letting anyone get any sleep. Indeed, I worked much later on this than I should have on a Sunday night.

Microns and Prismacolor markers on 11x14 drawing stock.

No comments have been added yet.

More from *SamWolk

Featured in Groups:

Details

Statistics

Alphabeasts Week XVby *SamWolk

The Journal Portal

Polls

What is your preferred drawing software?

deviantART [dee·vee·un'nt·ART]

Keep in Touch!

Deviousness

Add Media

Style