Okiku and the Nine Plates is a story about the tragic suffering of a plate-counting, well-dwelling ghost called Okiku. It is a famous Japanese folktale that can be traced back to the Kabuki play, Banchō Sarayashiki (Broken Dishes at Banchō Mansion). There are many variants to the story of how Okiku’s tortured soul came to inhabit the bottom of a well. Following is the folklore version.

Image source: Wikipedia

Yoshitoshi's The Ghost of Okiku at the Dish Mansion

As the tale goes, Okiku was a beautiful servant maid who worked for the samurai Tessan Aoyama. Aoyama attempted to seduce Okiku making amorous advances, which she rejected. In anger, he hid a precious ceramic plate that belonged to a treasured collection of ten heirloom plates. He then ordered Okiku to fetch the plates and count them in front of him. She counted only nine plates. Aoyama blamed the loss of the plate on Okiku however, as a concession, he offered to overlook the small matter of the missing heirloom if she relented and became his mistress. Okiku again refused and so an enraged Aoyama killed her, disposing her body down a well.

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Philanthropist, volunteer worker and resident of Peru, Scott Jeppesen of the charitable organisation Sonrisas en Peru, explores the fascinating history of Japanese immigration to Peru and the strong influence that Japanese culture has played on various aspects of Peruvian society.

I currently reside in Lima, the capital of Peru. Every day I am faced with some characteristic of Peruvian culture that has been derived from Japanese origins. Urged by curiosity I soon discovered the intriguing story of the Japanese Peruvians, a large ethnic immigrant group in Peru.

The Japanese Peruvians

The Japanese Peruvians are Peruvian citizens of Japanese ethnic origin. They constitute around 0.3% of Peru’s population (estimated at nearly 90,000 in 2008) which is the second largest population of people with Japanese ancestry in Latin America after Brazil.

Peru was the first Latin American country to accept Japanese immigration. Back in 1899 the first wave of 790 Japanese immigrants arrived at the Peruvian seaport Callao aboard the “Sakura Maru” from the Japanese port of Yokohama and thus spawned the Nikkei ethnicity in Latin America.

The Sakura Maru

Most notably, Japanese Peruvians were brought to the world’s attention in 1990 by the election of Alberto Fujimori, son of Japanese immigrants and the 90th president of Peru. Fujimori was the first person of Asian descent to become president of a Western country.

Alberto Ken'ya Fujimori

The first instance of tentacle eroticism (aka squid porn) is largely attributed to legendary Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai who created an erotic woodcut of the ukiyoue (‘pictures of the floating world’) genre around 1820 called The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife (aka ‘Pearl Diver and Two Octopuses’) depicting a woman entwined sexually with a pair of octopuses.

The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife

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