Who Is Miyagi?
The wife who waited, trusting a promise
Miyagi is Katsushirō's wife in "The House Amid the Thickets" from Ugetsu Monogatari. She is a beautiful woman with a fine and faithful heart.
In Episode 7, she tries to stop her husband from leaving, but trusts his promise and lets him go. When war ravages the village and people flee, she stays in the house, turns away the men who court her, and keeps waiting. Her husband does not return, and one autumn she dies. On a night in the seventh year, she lights a lamp and welcomes Katsushirō home, but what greets him is her ghost. The next morning he finds her grave and a poem she left behind.
At the end of the story, an old man tells the legend of Tekona of Mama, a girl loved by many men who threw herself into the water, and her story is set beside Miyagi's faithfulness.
