What is Bancho Sarayashiki?
Bancho Sarayashiki is a ghost story set in Bancho in Edo (today’s Chiyoda, Tokyo). It is one of the “Sarayashiki” (dish mansion) ghost stories, together with Banshu Sarayashiki, set in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, and is known as one of Japan’s great ghost stories alongside Yotsuya Kaidan and Kasanegafuchi.
The story of Bancho Sarayashiki
In the best-known version, a maid named Okiku served in the house of Aoyama Shuzen, a samurai with a mansion in Bancho. The family owned a set of ten plates treasured as an heirloom. One day, Okiku broke one of them (in some versions the lord’s wife hid it, or she was made to break it on purpose).
Furious, her master tormented and then killed Okiku and threw her body into an old well in the garden. From then on, every night a woman’s voice was heard from the bottom of the well sadly counting plates, “One, two, three…,” and on reaching nine, she would cry out, “One is missing!” The Aoyama family later fell into ruin because of the curse, it is said.
How the Sarayashiki story spread
The Sarayashiki ghost story was performed in joruri puppet theater and kabuki in the Edo period and spread throughout Japan. In the Taisho era, the playwright Okamoto Kido published the play Bancho Sarayashiki, portraying a tragic love between Okiku and her master, which became popular as a drama rather than a ghost story.
In the rakugo comic story “Sarayashiki,” crowds flock to hear Okiku’s ghost count plates, until she counts all the way to eighteen and explains, “I’m taking tomorrow off.” The frightening and sad story of a female ghost has been loved in many forms.
