Okiku broke one of ten heirloom dishes, was killed and thrown into a well, and Himeji Castle still shows the well

Kind 2: what the plays and storytellers say. The first staged version, a puppet play at Osaka's Toyotakeza in 1741, is set at Himeji. Aoyama Tessan, a retainer, plots to take the castle from his lords, the Kotera. Okiku, orphan daughter of a loyal retainer, spies for them. Aoyama's man Danshiro steals one of ten precious dishes entrusted to her. She is tortured, killed and thrown into a well, and her ghost rises counting dishes. Her sisters kill Danshiro and bring the box of dishes to calm her. In 1758 the storyteller Baba Bunko set it in Edo: Okiku, a servant of the magistrate Aoyama Shuzen, breaks one dish of the family collection; her finger is cut off and she throws herself into the well. Her counting drives away every servant, the shogunate learns of Aoyama's conduct, and his house falls. A later version by San'yutei Encho makes the dishes a treasure handed down by ancestors whose testament ordered a finger cut from anyone who damaged them. Scholar Matilde Mastrangelo notes that a collection of 35 local Okiku legends has a well in only ten. Himeji Castle's official guide marks the Okiku well in the Bizen bailey; it was known as the Tsurubetori well and took Okiku's name in the Taisho period.