The Mouth-less Wife

This is an old Ibaraki story, appearing in the Ibaraki Furusato Mukashi Banashi Book by Minoru Fujita.

Once upon a time, there lives a very stingy man. He was unmarried, but he refused to take a wife.

"If I take a wife, my rice will disappear! The only wife I'll take is someone who doesn't eat at all." He remained unmarried.

Then, one day a young woman came to visit the man. She was beautiful but had no mouth. When he saw her, the man cried out in joy. "This is just what I have been looking for!" he cried, and soon made her his wife.

The mouth-less wife woke up early every morning to make the man breakfast, but she never ate anything herself. At first the man was pleased, but then he began to wonder, "Hmmm, how can she be so energetic? Also, I seem to be losing a lot of rice. . . ."

Around this time, one day the man pretended to go out to work, but hid and saw outside the house. Then he peaked inside and saw his wife making huge rice balls in the kitchen. "What's she doing?" he whispered and continued to watch her.

After she finished making the rice balls, she unbound her hair. A large mouth became visible on top of her head, and she proceeded to stuff the rice balls into it. As the man looked in utter shock, she stuffed an entire pit of rice balls on top of her head. He accidentally cried out in fear and surprise, and hearing this, she turned towards him, showing her true form, a terrifying serpentine monster!

The monster threw the trembling man into a cage shaped like a huge basket, and hurriedly slithered out of the house. She took him down a desolate mountain path, un-traveled by human feet. The man, trembling in the cage, happened to see a branch of a large tree passing overhead. Unbeknownst to the monster, he jumped up, grabbed onto the branch firmly and lifted himself out of the cage.

He ran away as fast as his legs would carry him. Before long, the monster noticed that the man was no longer in the cage. She whipped around, and began to hunt him down. The monster was incredibly fast, much faster than the man, so there was no out running her. The man was not aware that the monster was almost upon him, but he was exhausted and could not run any longer. He jumped into the iris and mugwort bushes growing beside the path and hid himself. The monster appeared seconds later and said "I know you're here!" but she was repulsed by the irises and the mugwort and eventually left, never to bother him again.

That day was May 5th, and that is why every year on May 5th, as long as anyone can remember, people stick irises and mugwort in the thatched roofs of their houses.