('Lady Sayo of Matsura') or Matsuura Sayohime was a legendary heroine in Japanese mythology, the wife of the historical Ōtomo no Satehiko. She is referred to as Lady Otohi or Otohihime in an alternate ancient source.
The core legend was that she climbed atop a hill and so piteously waved her scarf (hire) at her husband's departing warship that the location afterwards was remembered as Hire-furi-no-mine or "Scarf-Waving Peak", now known as in the confines of the present-day city of Karatsu, Saga. The locale fell within the former , referred to as the "Matsuura region" in modern parlance.
However, the variant legend added that she was afterwards visited by her husband's look-alike and though she discovered the imposter to be a snake, she had gone missing and was eventually found dead. Later otogizōshi (fairy tale) versions of Sayohime, which were also readapted as , i.e., Buddhist "sermon ballad" pieces under the title Matsura chōja, contained an alteration of this plot where the heroine, in an act of filial piety, selling herself to be sacrificed to a serpent deity. Her life is ultimately spared in the fairy tale version.
The legend also recalled that she dropped a precious mirror which was a gift from her husband, and later it came to be believed that she had committed suicide by throwing herself into the river while clutching the mirror. This was then dramatized for the noh theatre in the early 15th century.
The motif of Otohihime/Sayohime waving her scarf from the mountaintop has been illustrated in picture books and woodblock prints.
Old legends
The legends of Matsura Sayohime (aka Otohihime) waving her scarf (hire, a piece of long cloth worn as part of the attire) at the warship carrying her husband are preserved in two ancient pieces of writing, written down some two hundred years after the supposed event took place in the 6th century.
Manyoshu version
Matsura Sayohime, according to the oldest account related in the poem collection Man'yōshū (8th century), was the wife of Ōtomo no Satehiko (or Sadehiko). In order to bid farewell to her husband, who was on a ship bound for Korea for a military campaign, she climbed atop a certain mountain peak. So deep was her sorrow: she seemed "gut-wrenchedly" chagrined and darkened-hearted as if her "soul had vanished". Finally, she managed to remove her own scarf and wave it, drawing others around her inevitably to tears.
Date
Ōtomo no Satehiko was known historically to have been dispatched on two military expeditions to Korea, and the setting of the legend concerns his first trip which occurred in the year 537; though it is the other Fudoki version of the legend described below which supplies the detail which leads to narrowing down this date.
Location
The , Sayohime's alluded place of origin, spans the current-day Nagasaki and Saga Prefectures. However, the specific mountaintop that had been dubbed , as attested in the Man'yōshū, has been identified as the summit of , on the eastern edge of the city of Karatsu, Saga.
Fudoki version (as Otohi) In the alternate version of the old legend preserved in the (8th century), the Lady Otohi (or Otohihime)of village appears as the name of the famed farewell-bidding wife of Ōtomo no Satehiko.
"Otohi" may indeed be the woman's proper name, however, it may also be a descriptor, with the word otohi having some meaning that is an extension of the oto ("youthful, innocent") element, or possibly meaning "those of younger age". The Lady Otohi is also referred to as otohime ("younger [sister] lady") in the poem inserted in the Fudoki account.
This version recounts that the lady dropped a mirror given by her husband at a ford, or river crossing, and thenceforth the place was named .
This version proceeds to tell the aftermath since the day the woman parts with Satehiko (waving her scarf at the Peak): she received visits from a look-alike of her husband for five nights in a row. Resolving to discover this man's true identity, she tied a "hemp" thread to the hem of his clothing and tracked him, thereby learning his true form: a snake residing at the marsh on the Scarf-Waving Peak. She was subsequently reported missing, and a search led to her skeletonized remains in the marsh.
A tale presenting this thread/yarn motif has been called the by Japanese scholars, and in the so-called , (Lady Ikutamayori) employs the same trick to discover the true form of the snake god Ōmononushi.