| Yao Bikuni | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Other Names |
Happyaku Bikuni |
|
First Appearance |
Japanese Folklore |
|
Created by |
Unknown |
Origin[]
Yao Bikuni ("eight-hundred (years) Buddhist priestess") originated in one of the most famous folk stories involving ningyo. It purports that a girl who ate it acquired everlasting youth and longevity, and became the nun Yao Bikuni also read Happyaku Bikuni, living to the age of 800. years.
In the typical version the girl who ate the ningyo was from Obama, Wakasa Province, and as a nun dwelled in a iori grass hut on the mountain at Kūin-ji temple in the region. She traveled all over Japan in her life, but then she resolves to end her life in her home country, and sealed herself in a cave where she dwelled or has herself buried alive on the mountain at the temple, and requests a camellia tree be planted at the site as indicator of whether she still remains alive.
In a version passed down at Obama, Wakasa, the sixteen-year-old girl eats the ningyo inadvertently, after her father receives the prepared dish as a guest, so that the family is not implicated in knowingly eating the ningyo or butchering it. The Kūin-ji temple history claims the father to have been a rich man named Takahashi, descended from the founder of the province, and when the daughter turned 16, the dragon king appeared in the guise of a white-bearded man and gave her the flesh as a gift. But there are versions known all over Japan, and the father is often identified as a fisherman. A fisherman reeled in the ningyo but discarded it due to its strangeness, but the young daughter had picked it up and eaten it, according to one telling.
Public Domain Appearances[]
All published appearances of Yao Bikuni from before January 1, 1930 are public domain in the US.