Azukiarai

The sound arrives from below the path, past the last roof, down where the water is. Something is working a handful of small hard beans against the bottom of a bowl, patiently, without hurrying. In 1805 the compilers of the Shirakawa gazetteer set it down as saku-saku, and they knew exactly where to send you for it: the deep mountains above Tsuriu, at a place called Takasuke, where charcoal burners slept beside their kilns and sometimes woke in the night to hear it going on outside the hut. Anyone who got up and went out found the same thing every time. Nothing was there.

Japan has an unusual number of names for this. It is Azukiarai across most of the country and Azukitogi through Hiroshima, Yamaguchi and western Ehime; Azukiage in the Iwate hills, Azuki-goshagosha at Kawanakajima, Azukisogi in northern Yamanashi, Azukikoshi in old Inaba, Azuki-sarasara across two districts of Okayama, Azukiyaro around Sakaide. In Kihoku, in Ehime, they also call it the sand-washer, and a 1985 survey of Iyo folklore lists the noise itself in three forms, sha-sha, jako-jako, shari-shari, and adds that it always comes on evenings when the rain is drizzling and it puts a cold line straight up the back.

What it looks like is a question most of the record declines to answer. In Kunisaki, in Ōita, the prefectural folklore volume states the position flatly: near ditches, ponds and the deep pools of rivers a sound like beans being washed is heard, and no form is seen. Where a shape does turn up it is not the same shape twice. Ibaraki and Sado give a squat figure with big eyes in the dress of a wandering priest, laughing to itself over the bowl, and there the encounter is lucky rather than dangerous, because a woman who carries beans down to the valley stream and catches sight of it can expect her daughter married before long. Against that, a schoolboys’ folklore circle in Matsuyama took down a very different account in 1974 from a man named Kubo Rinchi. In the first years of Meiji, at the washing place on the Samukawa, people said the Azukiarai came. One who saw it described a woman of about fifty, her head bound up in a working cloth, azuki and rice together in a tub, going shari-shari. For five years after that nobody went there to do their laundry. The woman died away somewhere.

The malicious version sings while it works. On the riverbanks of Ōita the words are reported as a question put to the dark: shall I wash my beans, or shall I catch a person and eat one. Attend to the voice and you find you have drifted to the edge, and then the edge is not under you. Around the Ōra district of Gunma and in Shimane it is said outright to carry people off. In Matsumoto it does other noises too, the crack and crash of a tree coming down where no tree has fallen, and the crying of a baby.

Stories explaining where it came from are almost as numerous as the names. The best known was printed in 1841 in the illustrated *Ehon Hyaku Monogatari*, and it is a murder. At a Nichiren temple in Takada, in Echigo, there lived an acolyte called Nichigen who had a disabled body and one extraordinary gift: he could look at a measure of azuki and say how many beans were in it, a *gō* or a *shō*, and never be wrong. The abbot was fond of him and meant him to inherit the temple. A monk called Enkai, who wanted that inheritance, threw the boy into the well. From then on beans came rattling against the shutters after dark, and at dusk something washed and counted beans at the river nearby. Enkai was eventually executed for it, and afterwards people passing the well heard two voices down there, still arguing.

Other districts keep the same grammar and change the corpse. At Hinohara in the western hills of Tokyo the creature is the Azukiaraido, and the story is that a young wife was scolded by her mother-in-law for letting grit through with the beans and went into the river over it, and the river has been washing beans ever since. At Nukada in Ibaraki the figure is a woman with a lineage: the daughter of the castle lord, cooking red-bean rice to see her father off on the morning before the castle fell to the allied forces of the main Satake house at Ōta and the Edo clan, more than four hundred years ago. He did not come back.

The country was also perfectly capable of taking the thing apart. In several provinces the Azukiarai is simply a weasel; the Ōita account says it is a weasel clacking its mouth, chaki-chaki, and Kokugakuin students collecting in Ogawa village in Nagano in 1960 got the same verdict about a night sound in a drainage channel. Elsewhere it is a fox, and in Okayama the fox has its own compound name for the trick. In Kyoto’s Miyama it is a shape-changing tanuki with a personal name, or else the wind rubbing bamboo leaves together. Hiroshima blames the otter. The Edo essayist Tsumura Sōan blamed a badger, and the magistrate Negishi Yasumori blamed a toad, which Akita and Fukushima also do. There was even a specific insect, the azukiaraimushi, now identified as the booklouse, which feeds on the starch in paper and whose wingbeats resonate through a *shōji* screen into something very like beans in water. At Itoigawa the coast is fine shingle, and the zaku-zaku of summer bathers crossing it does the job without any spirit at all. In Shirataka, in Yamagata, it is a stream.

Its powers amount to one noise, correctly placed. That is the whole of it, and it is enough, because the noise arrives from a direction where you cannot look and it carries the strong suggestion that you should go and check. The pull is the weapon. The corresponding limit is that the Azukiarai has to be approached; nobody in the records is seized at the roadside or pulled from a doorway, and the entities that do that in Japanese folklore are a different class of being with hands. Its other weakness is more interesting. It cannot survive an explanation. Every district that decided the sound was a weasel, or a toad, or a beetle in the paper, kept the name and lost the ghost, so that the creature now exists most strongly in the places that never worked out what the noise was.

Almost everything a modern reader pictures was drawn in 1841. Takehara Shunsen’s plate for the *Ehon Hyaku Monogatari* gave the bean-washer its crouch, its bowl and its riverbank, and Mizuki Shigeru carried that image into twentieth-century manga with the sound effects written in beside it, which is where the famous shoki-shoki comes from. The older written record does not use it. Yanagita Kunio’s own entry has that chant belonging to something else entirely, a white-robed Kōjin at a well in the northern Saku district who sings about washing rice and eating people while dropping the grain down the shaft. What the field collectors actually heard, again and again, was saku-saku and shari-shari, on wet evenings, from the water, with no one there. Around Shimosuwa, in Nagano, young men worked out that this was useful, and would post a friend at the riverbed to produce the sound at the right moment while they walked out with a girl.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Azukiarai?

The Azukiarai is a Japanese yōkai known almost entirely by sound: a rasping noise like azuki beans being washed or scoured in water, heard at night near a river, ditch, pond or well. It is recorded in nearly every region of Japan under a dozen local names, including Azukitogi and, in western Ehime, Sunaarai. In most accounts nobody sees anything at all.

Is the Azukiarai dangerous?

Usually not. In most districts it only makes a noise, and in Ibaraki and on Sado it is considered a lucky sign for a woman with a daughter of marrying age. The dangerous version is regional: on the riverbanks of Ōita it sings about catching and eating a person, and anyone who follows the sound is said to be led unawares to the water’s edge and dropped in. Traditions in Gunma and Shimane also say it carries people off.

What does the Azukiarai look like?

Most sources refuse to say, because the sound is heard and the form is not seen. Where a description exists it is inconsistent: Ibaraki and Sado report a short, large-eyed figure dressed as a wandering priest, laughing over its bowl, while a 1974 account from Matsuyama in Ehime describes a woman of about fifty with her head bound in a work-cloth, washing azuki and rice together in a tub.

Where does the story of the murdered acolyte come from?

It was printed in the illustrated Edo collection *Ehon Hyaku Monogatari* in 1841. In it, a temple boy named Nichigen at Takada in Echigo could count beans by sight without error, and a jealous monk called Enkai drowned him in a well. Afterwards beans were thrown against the shutters at night and something washed and counted them at the river, and once Enkai had been executed the two voices were heard arguing in the well.

Why is the Azukiarai often blamed on animals?

Because a great many communities worked out a natural explanation and kept the name anyway. The sound is variously attributed to a weasel clacking its mouth, a fox, a shape-changing tanuki, an otter, a badger, a toad, and a booklouse feeding on the starch in paper screens. At Itoigawa the shingle beach underfoot produces it, and in Yamagata it is simply a stream.

Related Entries

Azukibabaa, Sunakake-baba, Betobeto-san, Soraki-gaeshi, Yanari, Uwan, Yama-biko, Kawa-uso, Kamaitachi, Tanuki, Kitsune, Mujina, Onryō, Yōkai, Bean-nighe