Hashihime

Hashihime (橋姫) ("the maiden of the bridge"[1]) is a character that first appeared in Japanese Heian-period literature, represented as a woman who spends lonely nights waiting for her lover to visit, and later as a fierce “oni” or demon fueled by jealousy. She came to be associated most often with a bridge in Uji.

Hashihime as appearing in the Kyōka Hyaku-Monogatari from 1853

Biography

Very little is known about the origin of Hashihime. The most common interpretation is that she was a lonely wife pining for her husband / lover to return but due to his infidelity, she became jealous and turned into a demon.

Japanese literature

Hashihime first appears in a Kokinshu (ca. 905) poem, of which the author is unknown:

“Upon a narrow grass mat
laying down her robe only
tonight, again –
she must be waiting for me,
Hashihime of Uji”

Hashihime's name also appears in Murasaki's The Tale of Genji, as the title of a chapter. She is also mentioned several times in the waka poems throughout the work.

Legend

In earlier times, the term simply referred to worshiping at the shrine during the hours of the ox, and the curse connotation developed later. At the Kifune Shrine in Kyoto, there was a tradition that if one prayed here on the "ox hour of the ox day of the ox month of the ox year" the wish was likely to be granted, because it was during this alignment of the hour, day, month, and year that the Kibune deity was believed to have made descent upon the shrine. However, the shrine became known a cursing spot in later development.[15]

The Kibune Shrine became strongly associated with the ox hour curse following the fame of the medieval legend of the Hashihime of Uji ("The Princess of the Bridge of Uji [ja]"). The legend is considered the prime source of the later conception Ushi no toki mairi curse ritual.[15][16] According to legend, Hashihime in mortal life was the daughter of a certain nobleman, but consumed by jealousy, made a wish to become a kijin (an oni demon) capable of destroying her love rival. After 7 days at Kifune Shrine, she was finally given revelation by the resident deity "to bathe for thirty seven days in the rapids of the Uji River."[17] Note that even though Kibune has later been seen as a mecca for the ritual, Hashihime only learned the recipe here, and enacted it miles away (Kifune is in the north of Kyoto, the Uji River is to the south).

The earliest written text of the legend occurs in a late Kamakura-period variant text (Yashirobon codex[18]) of The Tale of Heike, under the Tsurugi no maki ("Book of the Sword") chapter.[19] According to it, Hashihime was originally a mortal during the reign of Emperor Saga (809 to 823),[17] but after turning demon and killing her rival, her man's kinsmen, then indiscriminately other innocent parties, she lived on beyond the normal human life span, to prey on the samurai Watanabe no Tsuna at the Ichijo Modoribashi (一条戻橋) "Turning Back bridge at the street crossing of Ichijō and Horikawa" bridge, only to have her arm severed by the sword Higekiri (髭切).[19] Tsuna kept the demon's arm, whose power was contained by the Yinyang master (陰陽師, onmyōji) Abe no Seimei, via chanting the Ninnō-kyō sutra.[18] In this variant of the "chapter of the sword", the ceremony that the woman undergoes at the Uji River to transmogrify into the demon is described as follows:

Secluding herself in a deserted spot, she divided her long hair into five bunches and fashioned these bunches into horns. She daubed her face with vermilion and her body with cinnabar, set on her head an iron tripod with burning brands [* [c]] attached to its legs and held in her mouth another brand, burning at both ends.

—From Tsurugi no Maki[12][17][20] Thus in the Tsurugi no maki can be seen such elements as the wearing of the tripod (here called kanawa (鉄輪)) and propping lit torches (similar to candles in later tradition), but the woman painted her entire face and body red, rather than remain in pure white garb.

Later during the Muromachi period, this legend was adapted by Zeami[12] into the Noh play Kanawa or "The Iron Crown".[17] The Noh play inherits essentially the same outfit for the principal woman, who is commanded by the oracle to "daub your face with red and wear scarlet clothing,"[15][17] and uses neither a straw doll or hammer,[15] but has the yingyang master Seimei creates "two life-size straw effigies of the man and his new wife [with] their names [placed] inside" in order to perform the rites to excorcize Hashihime's demon.[17] Therefore, the later form of the ushi no mairi developed afterwards, through the marriage of the use of dolls in the Japanese esoteric art of onmyōdō with the shrine visiting of the ox hour

The shoot 'em up game Subterranean Animism features the character Mizuhashi Parsee as a boss fight, a hashihime with the ability to manipulate jealousy.

References
  1. Shikibu, Murasaki; Tyler, Royall (2003). The tale of Genji. Penguin. p. 827. ISBN 978-0-14-243714-8. Retrieved 25 January 2012.
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