Original is here
http://www2.gol.com/users/bartraj/TheDragon-1.html
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 (, "dragon-
coils") and a water faucet (from which water issues) is jaguchi (
, "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 ( `qsj@lÕ, pg. 52)
Distribution of Kofun-era sites in Fujisawa from History of Fujisawa
City, Volume 4 (archeology) ("`sjA`S, 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 (``D"]), shown in this map of prehistoric Jomon
times. As a matter of fact, the Japanese term dako (֍s, 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 ("C"ԉG}, from ""앨, 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.
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 (), Kobukuroya (`'J), Shin (V),
and Otsuka (`'ː) 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
(rh), author of ̋N (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 (̋N,
pgs. 134-5); for example, this figurine with a snake attached to its
head (from ̋N, 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 (̋N, pgs. 141-
3). Japan's first depictions of dragons appear on late Yayoi pottery
(roughly 100-300 AD) (̋N, pg. 143). These examples are from
western Japan. Associated Chinese ideas, such as amagoi, or praying
to the dragon-deity for rain (J), 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, even likely,
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).
The corresponding passage in the Japanese version reads Wɂ݂
()l̂ގ܂ (literally, "the dragon filled the villages,
constantly swallowing people."
Obviously, a dragon can not fill a village. The term ݂ 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 (]"``),
quoted in ]"l, pg. 43, reads:
j'҃A\Zlmq'tAFm׃j"ۃkB'ҏDje`'m
jڃV"ގr'䢃jA''҃K'˃g]B
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).
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.
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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
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(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. For five years, I have been living 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.
(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).
(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.
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