Who Is Otafuku?
She’s not much to look at. She tends to be plump and frumpy, but something about Otafuku makes her the one you want to come home to. She’s always there, waiting, with a smile and warmth in her heart. She brings jollity to any occasion and greets each new situation with laughter and bright-heartedness. She’s fun and playful and open.
I love her. I have been drawn to her for 25 years! Somehow she has been beckoning, inviting me into Japan. Come explore the home and the hearth and the everyday life of the heart, she has been telling me. Come inside and play with me. Drink, eat with me, if you will. Let’s chat and gossip. Open up and have a good time. Let’s enjoy our lives.
I have always been drawn by interesting people. Hair out of place, maybe, hat askew, button forgotten, a twinkle of eye, a flashing smile. Someone different and warm and content with one’s self and ready to laugh at the world and, most of all, flow with it.
My creed of imperfection, of enjoying human foibles and originality seems to be best embodied in Otafuku. She is my passport to the side of Japan that is not formal or ordered. She is different things to different people, but to me she is warm, cozy, loving, accepting. Her joyful attitude toward life is one we could all espouse and one that I aspire to myself. She is a universal goddess who bids us all know what is amusing in life and in other people. She is a fount of generosity, of sharing her own abundance.
始まり | Beginning
Otafuku* Origins
In the very beginning, the dance and laughter of a goddess did what masculine force could not—restore order to the world. The earliest chronicles about the founding of Japan show us the power of a woman’s dance and humor.
The creation myths recorded in the Kojiki, Japan’s “Record of Ancient Things,” tell how Amaterasu Omikami, the Sun Goddess, angered by the violent pranks of her brother, Susano-o no Mikoto, hid herself in a cave and plunged the world into darkness. Chaos reigned. The eight million gods convened to decide how they could entice Amaterasu Omikami from the cave. They hung a mirror and streamers of plant fiber on a sacred tree, and Ame no Uzume no Mikoto, a good dancer, bound her head and her sleeves with vines, and then with leaves in her hands, mounted an overturned tub and stomped rhythmically on it. She went into a trance and pulled down her robe, exposing her breasts. The gods laughed uproariously at her humorous dance, and the Sun Goddess, curious to see what was causing the hilarity, peeped out of the cave. One of the gods was able to pull her from the cave back into the world while another deity placed a sacred straw rope (shimenawa) before the cave, making it impossible for her to return there. Thus light and order were returned to the world because of Uzume’s comic dance.
In historical times, the daughters of provincial aristocrats were sent to Kyoto and trained as shrine maidens to dance and perform at sacred rituals. These girls came to entertain in semireligious performances in shrines throughout Japan. They wandered through the country in performing troupes, which were the ancestors of noh and kyogen and kabuki dramas, continuing the tradition of Ame no Uzume’s entertaining dance. Some early sarugaku and dengaku masks representing Uzume no Mikoto were used for the dance. Other dance masks, portraying a strong-willed and somewhat plain woman, were called Otohime and Oto. Though there is no scholarly research to confirm my belief, Uzume’s heir is surely Otafuku, otherwise known as Ofuku, Okame, Otan and Otayan. The names vary with the areas where the masks were made. In time the masks came to exaggerate the ugly and the comical sides of her, so that the Otafuku we see today is a highly stylized version of Otohime. They still have the power to entertain and make people laugh. However homely, they all represent the same plain-featured soul who radiates goodwill and brings order and brightness to life. Her history is the history of Japan and has branches lost in the mists of local traditions and beliefs.
Uzume’s basic primal strength, her pure and unsullied humor and goodness are all contained in the myth of saving the universe from darkness and chaos with courage and laughter. This strength transcends time and place and language. Goddess and dancer, sage and comedienne, protector of the sun and preserver of life, she is a universal archetypal female. She is the brightness and vital energy and mystery in the heart of all women.
What’s in a Name?
* Otafuku and Okame today are different names for the same female figure as far as I have been able to ascertain. Whatever distinctions were once recognized have become blurred over the centuries. In this book the names are used interchangeably.
I borrowed the wayside shrine
from the fleas and mosquitoes
and went to sleep
祝福 | Blessing
An Otafuku Blessing
For days the diligent young women at my shop, Blue and White, had been making amulets— one is a small papier-mâché Otafuku face mounted on a slender bamboo stick, from which dangles a zigzag paper streamer decorated with a stamped spiral. A piece of dyed cotton and a sprig of rice completed the amulet. Another is little more than a small packet of handmade paper containing a ¥5 coin; the packet is stamped with a blue Otafuku face and tied over the head with a twist of indigo fabric. Felicitous symbols all.
But not quite enough, I thought, without a more direct heavenly endorsement. So my husband and I drove up to the quiet little Kumano shrine at the top of the mountain pass above our old farmhouse in the town of