Tonight’s tale takes place in Gōshū, which is another name for Ōmi Province, or what is today Shiga Prefecture. Sawayama is in what is now Hikone City, however the castle in this story is not the famous Hikone Castle, but a different one known as Sawayama Castle. It no longer stands today, but you can visit its ruins.
The last sentence of this story threw me for a loop, and I struggled with how to translate it. It talks about the son of a concubine and “his mother.” However, in this case, the son’s “mother” refers not to the concubine (his biological mother), but to the wife of his father. Technically she would be something like a stepmother, but the original text does not use the word for mother, and instead uses just the word mother. This is because after the son was named Iyo’s heir and inherited his name and title, Iyo’s legal wife became the son’s legal mother. Edo period inheritance, familial relations, and even naming conventions are often confusing. Rather than translate it as stepmother, I decided to leave it as mother as per the original text and explain it here.
Another question is why did praying to Benzaiten fix the problem? Sawayama is near Chikubu Island, home to one of the three most famous Benzaiten temples in Japan. Benzaiten is a powerful goddess in both Shinto and Buddhism. While Benzaiten is a goddess of water and music, she is also said to be a jealous goddess with the power to break up relationships and sever even deep romantic ties. By associating his mother, whose spirit was consumed by attachment and jealousy, with Benzaiten, he was able to exorcise the curse of jealous attachment that was haunting the house.
The Attachment of Saigō Iyo’s Wife
In Sawayama, Gōshū, in the household of a certain member of the Ii clan, there was a man named Saigō Iyo. For three years he lived and worked on the Ii estate, where he enjoyed fooling around with young women. His wife was a deeply jealous person, profoundly wrathful and always burning with jealousy over this fact, and in the end she died of these feelings. She always said, “Where will my longtime passion go? If I die, surely it will come for Master Iyo within a day or two. If it doesn’t, then everybody will scorn and laugh at me.” She had some white chemical stored under her mirror. “When I am in my final days, give me this drug,” she said, and she died not long after that. As was her wish, she was given the drug.
When Iyo returned home from the Ii estate, he gave his wife an intimate funeral. Afterwards, his household shook with the crying of all who were overcome with grief beyond description, and everyone’s faces were pale with sadness.
Three days after his wife’s death, Iyo went to the outhouse. After a few moments the sound of something falling came from within. Everyone was startled, so they opened the door of the outhouse. They found Iyo lying there, killed, with his eyeballs gouged out.
Iyo was succeeded by his son from one of his mistresses. His house was constantly haunted by shaking and rattling, the doors and shōji coming loose and being flung across the rooms by themselves, and other strange things. So the son prayed for his mother to Benzaiten, and afterwards the haunting subsided.
