Akariyazagama, Bearer of the Water of Life

Akariyazagama is a figure of Miyako Island myth recorded in the 1920s by the Russian orientalist Nikolai Nevsky. At the beginning of human history the Moon and the Sun sent their servant Akariyazagama down to earth on the night of the sïtsï festival with two pails on a shoulder pole: the water of rebirth (sïdimizï), to be poured on humankind, and the water of death (sïnimizï), meant for the serpents. Resting on the way, he set the pails down, and a serpent bathed in the water of rebirth; weeping, he could only pour the water of death over human beings before returning to heaven. Ever since, snakes slough their skins and renew their lives while humans age and die; for his failure he is said to stand on the face of the moon still holding his pails. The tale, which Nevsky connected with the Miyako custom of drawing lustral water at the sïtsï new-year festival, is the classic Ryukyuan myth of the origin of death.

Domains

• rejuvenating water
• origin of death
• moon

Powers

• to carry the waters of life and death between heaven and earth

Relations

• subordinate to: Tedako, the Child of the Sun

Sources

• Nikolai A. Nevskii, Tsuki to fushi [The Moon and Immortality], ed. Oka Masao, Tōyō Bunko 185 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1971)
• Aleksandra Jarosz, Nikolai Nevskiy's Miyakoan Dictionary: Reconstruction from the Manuscript and Its Ethnolinguistic Analysis (PhD dissertation, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, 2015)
• Katō Kyūzō, Ten no hebi: Nikorai Nefusukī no shōgai [The Heavenly Serpent: The Life of Nikolai Nevsky] (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1976)