Matsura Sayohime or Matsura no Sayohime (松浦佐用姫, "Lady Sayo of Matsura") ('Lady Sayo of Matsura'[1][a]) or Matsuura Sayohime[b] 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 Mount Kagami in the confines of the present-day city of Karatsu, Saga. The locale fell within the former Matsura-gun, 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 sekkyō-bushi, 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.
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