Hajisui no to

September 17th, 2009By Category: Travel

dsc03707-web3On the northern outskirts of Nago city along a mountain road is a small stone monument marked by a lone sign along the highway. Many travelers who go this way in a hurry to points elsewhere will pass it right by without paying it any mind. Being nothing more than a stone obelisk on a pedestal, it doesn’t look very interesting or worth stopping to take a look. What is interesting about it is the legend behind its name. It’s called the Hajiusui-no-To which translated means the monument of Shame.

I had heard of this place many years before when a local college professor jokingly said that it was placed in such an ungodly and out of the way place because the locals were ashamed of it. He didn’t seem to know very much else about the tale nor could he provide anyone of us with proper directions to it. Being the curious type I looked hard but found very little information on it. That led me to think that perhaps the Okinawan’s really were ashamed of it after all and the good professor wasn’t just telling a bad joke.

It took some deep digging but I was able to find a little bit of information, virtually all of it in Japanese. The most popular version of the legend is very much a “Romeo and Juliette” type tale of a handsome young man of humble origins from the East China Sea side village of Genka and a very beautiful young woman from a noble family in Higashi village on the opposite, Pacific Ocean, side of the island.

Like the Shakespeare tale, they were very much in love with each other but their families were dead set against any union let alone meeting between the two. Very much in love and unable to be apart from each other, each night they would sneak out of their family homes and meet along the mountain path halfway between their villages.

This secret rendezvous went on for some time but one night the young woman did not appear at the appointed time. After waiting for a considerable while, the young man began to think that she had spurned him and he got mad. In a fit of anger, he decided to return to his own village where he got drunk and made merry with some of the young ladies there.

It was some time later that same evening when she was finally able to sneak away from her home. When she went to the rendezvous place and didn’t see him waiting for her, she feared the worst. Thoughts raced through her head that perhaps he had fallen or gotten hurt. Concerned for his safety, she hurried down the mountain path toward Genka village.

Unfortunately when she got there she happened to see him drunk and “frolicking” with some of the young ladies of the village. Feeling betrayed by the man she loved and unable to bear the shame of it, she went back up the mountain path to their usual meeting spot and committed suicide.

The next day after sobering up, he felt bad about being so rash and set out to go to her and apologize. But when he found her lifeless body, he realized that he had played the fool and that his unfaithfulness was the reason for it. To show his remorse, he too killed himself. Local villagers found them and built a monument to put his shame on display for all who pass by it to see and learn from it.

Different versions of this tale switch the characters around so no one is really sure who was of noble lineage and who was the peasant. There are also some subtle differences in the chronology of events as well as questions as to whether they both committed suicide. The one thing we do know is that this little tale of love lost still lives today at a little out of the way place known as the Hajiusui-no-To or “monument of shame.” Luckily for them, they didn’t live in a big city like Naha!

Author of this article

Keith Graff

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