III. The Dragon
The Dragon in Japan
In Japan, the dragon (and snake) is associated with water and rivers.
This association is so close that it is still preserved in everyday
speech, in which a waterspout or tornado is tatsumaki (竜巻, "dragon-coils") and
a
water faucet (from which water issues) is jaguchi (蛇口, "snake-mouth").
M. W. DeVisser, in The Dragon in
China and Japan, writes: "Their dragons [the dragons of the
ancient Japanese] were kami,
gods, who lived in rivers and seas, valleys and mountains (in rivulets,
lakes and ponds), bestowing rain on their worshipers. That those river
gods could also cause wind we learn from the above quoted passage of
the Nihongi, where the god of
the
Northern river is said to have made a whirlwind arise in order to
submerge the calabashes. So the three kinds of dragons, to be found in
Japan, original Japanese, Chinese, and Indian, all have one feature in
common, i.e., the faculty of causing rain; while the winds belong to
the
domain of the former two." (Dragon in China and Japan, pg.
154).
The Dragon in the Enoshima Engi
At the time of most of the events related in the Enoshima Engi (the Kofun era,
roughly 300-710 AD), the inhabitants of the area around Enoshima lived
mainly on the sides of low hills, as indicated by the two maps below.
 |
|
Distribution
of Kofun-era sites in the Kamakura-Fujisawa area from History of Kamakura City: Archeology
( 鎌倉市史 考古編, pg. 52)
|
Distribution
of Kofun-era sites in Fujisawa from History
of Fujisawa City, Volume 4
(archeology) (藤沢市史、第４巻, pg. 29)
|
From the crests of most of these hills, an observer could see the
winding course of the Kashio River below. It is a meandering river,
snaking its way through the drowned valley of what previously was the
Ofuna estuary (大船入江), shown in this map
of prehistoric Jomon times. As a matter of fact, the Japanese term dako (蛇行, winding snake-like, i.e.,
meandering) is used to describe the river in geography textbooks.
Below is a detail from a set of illustrations of the Tokaido Road that
was completed in 1806 (東海道分間延絵図, from 柏尾川物語, pg. 30). The detail shows the
upper reaches of the Kashio River around present-day Totsuka. Note the
broad flood-plain and the way the river snakes through it (1).
The point is that to ancient observers on the hills, the Kashio River
would have looked like a snake or dragon lying below (1b). Another
instance of a dragon-shaped waterway in Japan being regarded as the
home of a dragon is here
at Inbanuma.
In the Enoshima
Engi, the lake is described as the abode of a five-headed dragon:
The lake was the lair of a fierce, evil
dragon, a dragon-king with five heads on one body (see
translation).
From their vantage point on the hills, these same ancient observers
would have seen the main tributaries of the Kashio River. At present,
the river has four main tributaries from present-day Ofuna southward:
they are the Sunaoshi (砂押川), Kobukuroya
(小袋谷川), Shin (新川), and Otsuka (大塚川) rivers (see this
page on Kamakura's rivers, for example). One major characteristic
of
the Kashio River is that all of its main tributaries are on the east or
southeast side of the river. To observers on the hills, these four
tributaries would have looked like heads on the body of a sinuous
dragon, especially if the tributaries had their sources in a lake or
pond, with the head formed by Sagami Bay, which reached as far as
present-day Fujisawa in earlier times. Now we can surmise why Kokei
described the destructive dragon, whose lair was in the lake, as having
five heads.
Below is a diagram of my conception of the dragon-like shape that the
ancient observer may have seen from a location between Kawana, which is
approximately where the Kashio River entered Sagami Bay at the time
covered in the Enoshima Engi,
and present-day Ofuna during the late Jomon and Yayoi eras. In this
view, the mouth of the dragon corresponds to the mouth of the Kashio
River. The diagram is based on the
page referenced above with my addition of a portion of Sagami Bay
corresponding to the main head of the dragon (2). Note that all of the
tributaries, which correspond to the subsidiary heads of the dragon,
are
on one side. Nowadays, of course, the area has been changed so much by
engineering works that some of the tributaries no longer are
recognizable from the hills.
Depictions of Snakes/Dragons on Pottery
Judging from depictions on pottery, the snake appears to have gained a
prominent role in the middle Jomon era. Professor Hiroshi Arakawa
(荒川紘),
author of 龍の起原 (The Origin of the
Dragon), states that around 1000 BC, pottery underwent a
substantial change, with the quantity of pottery increasing sharply,
especially in Japan's Chubu, Kanto, and Hokuriku regions. Decorations
tended to be abstract and seem to have had a magic-related
significance.
Snake motifs predominated in the cateogy of non-abstract decorations (龍の起原, pgs. 134-5); for example, this figurine with a snake attached to
its head (from 龍の起原, pg. 135).
If the snake had great significance in middle Jomon culture, an
individual would not need much imagination to stand on a hill
overlooking the Ofuna Estuary (precursor of the Kashio River) and liken
the course of the water to the body of a snake, its mouth to the mouth
of the snake, and its tributaries to multiple heads on the snake.
According to Professor Arakawa, the snake motif disappears with the
advent of the rice-farming-based Yayoi culture, which appears to have
its origin in China, south of the Yangtse River (龍の起原, pgs. 141-3). Japan's first
depictions of dragons appear on late Yayoi pottery (roughly 100-300 AD)
(龍の起原, pg. 143). These examples are from western Japan.
Associated Chinese ideas, such as amagoi,
or praying to the dragon-deity for rain (雨乞い), probably accompanied the
dragon concept. Such ideas, which probably played important roles in a
rice-farming-based culture like the Yayoi, assume that the
water-associated dragon-deity has control over natural phenomena such
as
rain, the lack of rain, hail, and so on.
To sum up the above section, there is no evidence (apart from the Enoshima Engi) that the inhabitants
of the vicinity in the middle Jomon and late Yayoi periods identified
the Kashio River as a snake or dragon. However, it would have been
entirely natural for them to have done so (3).
Destruction Caused by the Dragon
The dragon's destructive activities may be summarized as follows:
For a roughly seven-hundred-year period from 660 BC to around 70 AD (4),
"the evil dragon, accompanied by the
spirit of the wind, demons, mountain spirits, and other spirits,
wreaked
calamities throughout the land. Hills crumbled, releasing floods and
causing damage resulting in plagues and revolts" (see
translation).
For a sixty-year span around the turn of the first century AD, the evil
dragon constantly made fire (or heavy rains, the text is not clear
here)
and rain descend on the region, forcing the inhabitants to seek shelter
in caverns.
At the beginning of the sixth century, the dragon invaded villages in
the locality, swallowing children and forcing the villagers to move to
a
safer place.The people even offered a human sacrifice to the
dragon-god,
but the offering was in vain.
The dragon's physical appearance is described as follows.
The dragon's "eyes emitted piercing
rays like the sun at daybreak, and its torso was surrounded by black
clouds" (see
translation).
It is obvious that much of the physical appearance of the dragon (the
black cloud surrounding its torso and the lightning-like rays emitted
by
its eyes) and most of the destruction caused by it (the storms and
floods it caused) are related to water in the broadest sense.
Textual Evidence
Now let us return to the texts. The Chinese version of the Enoshima Engi states:
The evil dragon then spread out
through
the villages, swallowing and devouring children. Terrified, the
villagers forsook their homes to move elsewhere. The people of that
time
named the new location
Koshigoe
(
translation). (2b)
The corresponding passage in the Japanese version reads
龍邑里にみちて(満ちて)人をのむ事やまず (literally, "the dragon filled the villages, constantly
swallowing people."
Obviously, a dragon can not fill
a village. The term みちて has a semantic range much like "filled" in
English, and the passage is not comprehensible, unless the dragon was
amorphous (i.e., like flood waters).
The Chinese version of the Enoshima Engi contains a story about a village elder whose
16 children were swallowed by the dragon. A slightly different
version of the story about the elder from an Edo-era work composed in
1754 entitled Enoshima Ozoshi
(江島大草紙), quoted in 江島考,
pg. 43, reads:
時ニ長者アリ十六人ノ子ヲ育フ、皆悪龍ノ為ニ呑レヌ。長者愁ニ咽テ宅ヲ西ノ里ニ移シ彼
屍ヲ茲ニ埋ム、是ヲ長者ガ塚ト云。
At the time, there was a village elder with 16 children, all of whom
were swallowed by the dragon. Choked with grief, the elder moved his
household to a settlement in the west where he interred their corpses.
It then was called "Elder's Mound."
If the dragon had eaten the children, there would be no bodies left to
bury. Obviously, they were victims of something else, i.e., flood
waters, in this case.
The Dragon = Water
By now it should be clear that the dragon can be viewed as a
deification of water, which was the environmental factor that was the
biggest threat and benefit to the lives and livelihoods of the
inhabitants of the locality.
To make this point clear to western readers, I suggest the following
experiment: read the translation again, substituting the phrase "Old
Man
River" every time the "dragon" directly impacts the lives of the
villagers. A passage such as:
The evil dragon
then turned up everywhere in the villages, swallowing children
then becomes:
Old
Man River then turned up everywhere in the villages, swallowing children
It is likely that the villagers were threatened by raging flood waters
of some sort (refer also to this note and footnote 5
below).
These observations lead to the conclusion below.
Conclusion regarding the Dragon
The correlations between the characteristics of the dragon, a god of
rivers, and the flooding and other environmental conditions related to
the violent rivers of the locality are clear. This website argues that
the dragon described in the Enoshima
Engi was an embodiment of the waters of the Kashio and Sakai
Rivers, which were the greatest threat to the lives and livelihoods of
the people in the locality. Flooding in these rivers caused widespread
devastation in the past, including damage from floodwaters and
landslides, as well as disease in the wake of floods. The dragon-god of
the river waters also governed rain (too much of which also causes
landslides), lack of rain (drought), hail, and other things that fell
from the heavens.
In other words, the destructive dragon in the Enoshima Engi was the embodiment in
the popular mind of the overwhelming threat posed by water to the lives
and livelihoods of the people in the locality. In their minds, water
(and the lack of water) was governed by the capricious and destructive
dragon-god, who ruled over river waters, rain, and other things that
fell from the skies.
Now that we have determined the basic nature of the dragon, we can
return to identifying more locations and the prevailing conditions in
the area.
Go to IV. Conditions Prior to the
Sixth Century
Report broken links
(1) At present the Kashio River
and the lower reaches of the Sakai (Katase) River no longer snake;
their
banks were encased in concrete during the postwar period. Nonetheless,
the Kashio River is still violent. From 1999 to 2004, I lived
on
a bank of the Kashio-Sakai River, within walking distance of the events
described in the Enoshima Engi, and I can testify to the power the
river still commands. Whenever there is heavy rain into the river's
catchment basin, as when a typhoon passes in the vicinity, which occurs
several times annually, the river rises drastically within a few hours,
and often there is flooding somewhere along its course.
(1b) Note that both the Puyang River of China and the ancient Sarasvati
River of India showed the same winding, snaking course in their lower
reaches. Part of the lower reaches of the Sarasvati were known as
"Nara," which comes from "Naga" (snake). See The
Relationship between the Puyang River in China and the Kashio River.
(This paragraph added in April 2006.)
(2) If the extent of Sagami Bay (in ancient times) is regarded as
corresponding to the mouth of a dragon, then Enoshima Island would
correspond to the jewel that dragons are often pictured as trying to
catch. For this observation, I am indebted to Mr. Kurobe (personal
message).
(2b) (See A
Possible Relationship between the Puyang River in China and the Kashio
River) (as of February 2006). This
section points out similarities between the Kashio River and the Puyang
River south of Hangzhou, China. The Puyang River frequently experienced
heavy rains in its hilly catchment area, swelling the river. The heavy
volume of water rushing down its channel would rush up against the
incoming tide, causing serious flooding. A similar situation may have
existed around the Kashio River.
(3) Note that in Asia it is not uncommon for dragon to be a metaphor
for river. The Mekong in its delta, which has nine channels, is known
for example as the "Nine Dragons River."
(4) The dates here are traditional, unconfirmed dates according to the
time-scheme used by Kokei, which was based in part on the reign-eras of
legendary emperors.
(5) Here
is part of a newspaper article from July 2007 reporting what may be a
similar phenomenon, in which a fishing village is threatened by "rising
waves that had been creeping into the beach, destroying houses,
properties, unearthing coconuts trees and gobbling nearby land in the
process."
Following are the pertinent parts of the article:
Tidal
Waves Pound India's Kanyakumari Coastline (July 06, 2007)
THIRUVANTHAPURAM, July 6 (Bernama) --
Violent tidal waves have been battering the coastlines of Kanyakumari
district lately, killing four people and destroying more than 50
fishing boats, menacing coastal communities in the southern tip of
India.
Along the 64 km coastline of
Kanyakumari or known as Cape of Comorin -- gushing sea waves continued
to pound about 24 villages decked along the coast.
In the aftermath of the Indian
Ocean-triggered Tsunami in December 2004, villagers, mostly fishermen,
had been living in fear of the rising waves that had been creeping into
the beach, destroying houses, properties, unearthing coconuts trees and
gobbling nearby land in the process.
"We live in fear every
day because the waves continue to push itself inland and we don't know
why this is happening. [My
emphasis]
"Fishermen in my village have not
gone fishing for months because of the rough seas and our livelihood
have been affected these days," A. Jerome, a traditional fisherman told
Bernama during a visit to the damaged site along the Kanyakumari
coastal areas....
Panic-stricken villagers are baffled
about the unusual rising tidal waves while marine scientists have yet
to establish the reason for this rare phenomenon in this coastal
area....
This does not mean that these "rising waves" are precisely the same
phenomenon and are due to the same causes that were present at Enoshima
when the dragon (i.e., floodwaters) moved inland. However, there is at
least a superficial similarity. (as of July 2007)
