Once upon a time, there lived a very dutiful son. When his old father became sick, the filial son tried everything to cure him. Unfortunately, no medicine seemed to be working at all. But the son never gave up. He scoured every corner of the country for a good doctor. Finally, he was able to find an excellent doctor. But when he explained his father’s symptoms, the doctor didn’t say anything, and had a serious expression on his face. As the young man repeatedly asked the doctor how he could save his ill father, the doctor began to speak in a heavy voice. “Young man, there is one method to treat your father. You must get three livers from healthy people and boil them before giving them to your father. But this means you have to kill three people just to save one life. Although I told you about this method, I’m strongly opposed to actually using it. Don’t take the lives of innocent people and just let your father die a peaceful death.”

The son’s heart sank. He was in so much agony that he couldn’t eat or sleep well. After a lot of thinking, he was determined to use the horrible method to save his father, even if he would go to hell after he died.

So, he went to the hills and hid himself behind a tree, waiting for someone to pass by. After a while, a man who looked like a scholar or a fine gentleman was coming up on the hills. The son felt his heart pounding wildly, but he plucked up his courage and only thought of his father. He jumped from behind the tree and killed the scholarly-looking man in an instant. He then took out the man’s liver and wrapped it very carefully.

His hands were trembling. He tried very hard to stay calm and waited for someone else. This time, he noticed a Buddhist monk coming toward him. The monk was reciting a sutra. For a moment, he felt guilty for what he was going to do to Buddha’s disciple. But he reminded himself that this was the only way to cure his father. The Buddhist priest met the same tragic end as the scholar. Lastly, the son saw a young man approaching. The man looked very cheerful, singing and dancing. He looked deliriously happy, though. The son thought this man must be insane. But it didn’t matter. The crazy man was a healthy human being with a liver, and that was all he needed. He buried the bodies in the ground and returned home. The son now had three livers from three healthy people.

Probably thanks to the special “medicine,” the old father’s health miraculously recovered. But the son felt down at the thought of the three innocent people he had killed. He wanted to comfort their souls at least. So he went to the gravesite where their bodies were buried and held a memorial ritual, with food placed in front of it. There, he happened to find a strange weed sprouting. He closely examined the plant and found that it had ears of yellow grain. He took the weed home and planted it in his field. The next fall, he even reaped the harvest. After cooking, however, he found that the grain didn’t taste very good. So he simply stored the grain in the shed. He forgot about it completely. As time passed, a smell came from the shed. He recalled the grain and opened the shed. At first, the grain smelled as if it was rotting. But its taste turned out to be surprisingly good. That was how liquor was created for the first time.

Tradition has it that alcohol contains the souls of the three ill-fated people who had been murdered tragically and that their characters appear, one by one, in people who drink. First, the drinker is calm and gentle like the scholar. As he drinks more alcohol, he begins to chant or mutter something to himself, like the Buddhist monk. If he keeps drinking further, the last soul appears and the drinker can’t control himself and becomes like the crazy man.