Azukiarai

What it is

Azukiarai is one of the yōkai, the uncanny beings that fill Japanese storytelling: not gods, not quite ghosts, but odd neighbours of the human world. This one is met with the ears before the eyes. Beside a river or another stretch of water, a listener hears a steady wash and grind, exactly like azuki beans, small red beans of the Japanese kitchen, being cleaned. The sound has a maker, though he is hardly ever seen. Belief holds that anyone drawn near to look will end up in the water. In some tellings the hidden washer sings while he works, a teasing verse that weighs grinding beans against catching a person to eat.

How it is done

Accounts follow a set pattern. The noise arrives first, a rhythmic rinse-and-grind that could only be azuki beans, close to a riverbank or another body of water. The washer himself almost never shows. Some versions give him a song, a taunt in which he asks whether he will grind his beans that day or seize someone to eat, carried along by a repeated chant. Curiosity completes the picture: the tales insist that whoever moves toward the sound finishes up in the water. When the noise is explained away, suspicion tends to settle on a tanuki or a weasel.

Tools and materials

The inventory is short. Azuki beans, a small bean much used in Japanese cooking, supply the noise, and the figure is pictured bent over a pail, rinsing them. Water serves as both stage and instrument, since the sound belongs to rivers and similar spots. Even the name turns on the beans: both of its forms, the washer and the grinder, take their titles from the bean and the chore done to it.

What people believe

In the world of Japanese folk tales, a strange sound by the water needs an owner, and this one received a small, unpleasant man. The few who describe him tell of a squat figure with a big balding head, bulging yellow eyes, crooked teeth and a thin moustache, in ragged clothes, stooped over his work. Some communities prefer an animal culprit and pin the noise on a tanuki, the raccoon dog, or on a weasel. A single rule governs the meeting: closeness to the sound ends in a fall into the water. Whether that is menace or mere mischief, the tales leave open.

Compare and confuse

Under its second name, Azukitogi, the same figure becomes the bean grinder rather than the washer, a shift of chore more than of character. Some tellings remove the spirit altogether and lay the sound on animals: a tanuki, the raccoon dog, or a weasel, said to be making the noise in its place.

Questions people ask about Azukiarai

Good reading and sources

• Azukiarai on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data