What (may have) Really Happened


The area covered in the story — the flood-basin of the Kashio River and its surrounding hills — is right at the spot where three tectonic plates meet. It is not only one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world, but also one of the most volcanic.

It is also extremely fertile. Even today, the river and seacoast is full of fish and waterfowl, and the climate is made quite mild by the nearby bay and current flowing from the south. To the ancient people, it must have been a tempting place to live, offering plenty of food and a pleasant climate.

Yet at the same time, it must have been a dangerous place to live. There is evidence of frequent, serious flooding and violent earthquakes. (In the story, of course, these events are said to have been caused by the destructive water-dragon.)

EnoJinjaDragon
One view of the havoc-wreaking dragon



And that is what the story basically says. It tells of people's suffering caused by floods and earthquakes. Their suffering gradually worsened until it peaked in the sixth century, when suddenly rising waters took the lives of many villagers, particularly their children.

Just as the situation became unbearable, in May-June 552 AD (or possibly AD 538), strange events took place. There was a swarm of earthquakes and the seashore was covered in dark clouds. Then a bright light appeared above the clouds, and when the clouds cleared, a new island had risen offshore.


Enoshima
The island of Enoshima, said to have appeared in the wake of earthquakes and celestial phenomena


Afterwards, the people noticed that their land had become much more liveable.  Earthquakes and flooding had become less serious.

Their Buddhist teachers had a plausible interpretation of what had happened: they said that the bright light above the clouds was the goddess Benzaiten, who descended upon the island to save the people. By subduing the destructive water-dragon, she made the land more liveable [1].

MyoonBenzaiten
This wood-carving of the savior-goddess, Hadaka Benzaiten (naked Benzaiten) is kept in the Hoanden treasure storehouse on the grounds of Hetsunomiya Shrine on Enoshima Island. She is naked because of her role as the goddess of knowledge, which must be unadorned (cf. the English term, "the naked truth").


Nowadays, our intellectual framework has changed, and our explanation may be different. We may suspect that a singular geologic event took place in 552 AD in conjunction with the passage of a meteor (the bright light above the clouds) or some other celestial object. As part of this singular event, the island of Enoshima and the related dragon-shaped hill that runs along the river underwent sharp increases in height, and the general lay of the land changed somewhat. Afterwards, flooding and earthquakes were not as severe.

But whether we attribute these beneficial changes to the "subduing of a water-dragon" or to a "singular geologic event," we are referring to the same thing. Only our terminology is different.

[1] After all, Benzaiten was in origin the Sarasvati of ancient India, which was both a mighty river and the goddess of that river. Legend says both that Sarasvati (the goddess) subdued a dragon-snake, and that Sarasvati (the river) experienced huge earthquakes that changed it from being a powerful river into a stream of pools.

The parallels between these semi-legendary events in India and what happened to the Kashio River in Japan must have been active in the mind of the monk who wrote the history. His insight into the parallels probably led him to designate Benzaiten as the goddess who subdued the water-dragon. Her taming of the destructive water-dragon reduced the severity of earthquakes, floods, and other disasters, and this made the fertile area around Enoshima more liveable.

There is another reason why the story may be important. There is a growing body of evidence that the earth suffered some sort of catastrophe in the AD 535-555 timeframe. This leads to a question. Were the spectacular phenomena in the air and on the ground at Enoshima purely local, or were they instead part of phenomena that took place on a broader scale, perhaps worldwide? Read this section of my study for details.
Go to Enoshima Island today
Go to my translation and study of the Enoshima Engi (the translation will probably be the most interesting part, unless you're a scholar in the field)