Kijimunaa

The old gajumaru at the edge of the village gives itself away after dark. A small blue light, no stronger than the coal on a stick of incense, comes down through the hanging curtain of aerial roots, crosses the sand, and goes out over the reef flat, low and fast, skimming the water without breaking it. There is a body attached to that light, about the size of a four-year-old, and it is on its way to work.

The kijimunaa belongs to Okinawa and the islands around it, and the name says what it is: a thing of the tree, a wood spirit. Folk collectors have taken it down under a whole shelf of names. In the centre and south of the main island it is kijimuna or kijimun. In the north, in the Yanbaru forest country, it is bunagaya. Cross to Amami Oshima and the same creature answers to kenmun. One old name, tiyaachaa, records the belief that it has eight fingers. The Yaeyama islands, oddly, seem never to have known it at all, which has not stopped the kijimunaa from becoming the household spirit of the entire prefecture.

Descriptions collected from Okinawan villagers through the second half of the twentieth century circle the same few details and then scatter. It is a small child, three or four years old, with a head and hands too big for the body. It is red. The red is sometimes the face, sometimes a mane of loose red hair falling forward, sometimes a coat of red fur over the whole body, sometimes a bobbed cut and a red robe. Some say it looks like a monkey. Some say it looks like an old man until you look properly and see that it is the tree. Some say its arms keep going, out and out, like branches. The one thing nobody disputes is the colour, and the colour is the colour of a fire.

Where it comes from depends on who is asked. The most common account is quiet and rather beautiful: a gajumaru, a strangler fig, or an akou tree that has stood for more than a hundred years stops being only a tree. Okinawans speak of the kiinushii, the master of a great tree, and the kijimunaa is that master with a face on it and a personality to match. Others insist the creature is not the tree’s spirit but a lodger in it, occupying the hollow of an old trunk and moving house when it feels like moving house. It settles into the ridgepoles and roof beams of wooden houses too, and it fishes from the sea, so its range takes in the mountain, the village and the water in a single sweep. Mainland folklorists, reaching for something familiar, filed it with the kappa. The comparison holds for about as long as it takes to remember that the kappa drowns you and the kijimunaa makes you rich.

The fishing is the heart of it. A man who has made friends with one is woken at night, told to climb on its back, and carried out over the water. The kijimunaa walks on the surface. It dives, it works the reef, and it comes up with more fish than any boat has a right to hold, and it asks for one thing in return. It eats the eyes. Every fish that comes back to the house is missing an eye, and the rest of the fish is yours. There is one rule for the passenger, and it is absolute: do not break wind. At sea, a fart will turn a helpful spirit into a furious one, and a furious kijimunaa will upend the boat and go home.

The best of its stories comes from Ogimi, in the north. The king in Shuri had forbidden peasants to build large houses, so when old Tarumii of Yakabi raised a tiled roof in a single night, the news reached the palace and the old man was roped and dragged before the throne. His defence was the bunagaya. He had gone up into the hills in the fifth month for timber, found a fine oak, and lifted his axe, and the leaves came up around him in a blinding storm. On a branch above sat a naked, pot-bellied, red-haired bunagaya playing a bamboo flute. Tarumii promised to spare the tree. The bunagaya named its price: bring us crabs, and shrimp, and the eyes of fish. He hung them from his eaves. At midnight something woke him, a heavy thudding, and out in the yard the bunagaya were swarming over the ground like ants, raising pillars, setting the ridge, laying red tile, working with a neatness he could only stand and admire. The king listened to all this, decided the real criminal was the bunagaya, and sent his men to arrest them instead.

That is a story told about the spirits. What the people of Kijoka and Janagusuku did about them is stranger and better attested. In the eighth month of the old calendar, families went out and built watching huts, some on hillsides, some pitched in the crowns of enormous trees, and sat in them holding their breath as the moon fell towards the western hills, waiting for the bunagaya to come out over the river and the fields. The custom was called arami. Yamashiro Zenko, who collected the testimony of the people who kept it, remembered around fifty such huts standing when he was a boy in the early years of Taisho, and the practice ran on, noisily and happily, until the eve of the Second World War. Then the war came, and the huts were never rebuilt.

Its powers all follow from what it is. It has the strength of a full-grown tree in the body of a toddler, and will haul firewood and timber for a man it likes. It walks on water and stays under it. It throws a fire that flies and settles and burns, and carries a fainter light of its own, the kijimunaa-bii. It comes and goes on a sound like a low hum. There are male and female kijimunaa, and they gather in crowds. The weaknesses are just as specific, and they read like a list of household defences, which is exactly what they are. It cannot bear octopus. It cannot bear the smell of a fart, or the noise of a cockerel, or hot pot lids, or oak charcoal ground up with indigo. Loud sounds and thunder frighten it. A nail driven into the trunk of its tree will drive it out, and so will felling the tree, and either act ends the friendship for good. Prayer will send it away. When it goes, the fish stop coming, and the household that ate so well for so long learns what it was actually living on.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Kijimunaa?

Kijimunaa is a small tree spirit from the folklore of Okinawa and the surrounding islands. It is usually described as a red-haired, red-faced child with an oversized head, living in the hollow of an ancient gajumaru (banyan) or akou tree. Its name means, roughly, a thing of the tree.

Why does the Kijimunaa only eat fish eyes?

The eyes are its payment. When a kijimunaa takes a human friend fishing, it carries him on its back across the surface of the sea, catches an enormous haul, and keeps only one eye from each fish, leaving the rest for the household. Villagers said you could tell a kijimunaa catch at a glance, because every fish was missing an eye.

How do you drive away or defeat a Kijimunaa?

Okinawan tradition lists a very particular set of repellents. The kijimunaa hates octopus, the crowing of a cockerel, hot pot lids, and oak charcoal mixed with indigo, and it is frightened by loud noise and thunder. Driving a nail into its tree or cutting the tree down forces it to leave permanently, and it can also be sent away by prayer. Breaking wind in its presence, especially at sea, will enrage it enough to capsize a boat.

Is the Kijimunaa the same as the Bunagaya?

They are generally taken to be the same creature under different regional names. Kijimunaa and kijimun are the terms used in central and southern Okinawa, bunagaya is the northern name used in the Yanbaru region, and kenmun is the Amami Oshima form. Some accounts insist the bunagaya of the forests and rivers is a distinct being, so the identification is not universal.

Is the Kijimunaa dangerous?

Not usually, and not by nature. It is mischievous rather than malicious, and a household on good terms with one prospers. It becomes dangerous when it is offended or betrayed, at which point it will sit on a sleeper’s chest until they can barely breathe, throw fire, tip a boat, or simply leave and take the family’s good fortune with it.

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