Wani (dragon)

First, in the "White Hare of Inaba" fable, the gods try and fail to help a shiro 白 (lit.

So do you go and fetch every member of your tribe, and make them all lie in a row across from this island to Cape Keta.

As I was weeping and lamenting for this reason, the eighty Deities who went by before [thee] commanded and exhorted me, saying: 'Bathe in the salt water, and lie down exposed to the wind.'

Thereupon the Deity Great-Name-Possessor instructed the hare, saying: "Go quickly now to the river-mouth, wash thy body with the fresh water, then take the pollen of the sedges [growing] at the river-mouth, spread it about, and roll about upon it, whereupon thy body will certainly be restored to its original state."

[2] Second, wani is a fundamental theme in the myth of the demigod brothers Hoori and Hoderi.

The sea god Watatsumi or Ryūjin "summoned together all the crocodiles"[3] and chose one to escort his pregnant daughter Toyotama-hime and her husband Hoori from the Ryūgū-jō palace back to land.

Hereupon [His Augustness Fire-Subside], thinking these words strange, stealthily peeped at the very moment of delivery, when she turned into a crocodile eight fathoms [long], and crawled and writhed about; and he forthwith, terrified at the sight, fled away.

But thy having peeped at my [real] shape [makes me] very shame-faced," – and she forthwith closed the sea-boundary, and went down again.

[4] Basil Hall Chamberlain compared Ernest Mason Satow's translation of wani as "sea shark".

There is perhaps some want of clearness in the old historical books in the details concerning the creature in question, and its fin is mentioned in the "Chronicles."

But the accounts point rather to an amphibious creature, conceived of as being somewhat similar to the serpent, than to a fish, and the Chinese descriptions quoted by the Japanese commentators unmistakably refer to the crocodile.

The translator therefore sees no sufficient reason for abandoning the usually accepted interpretation of wani (鰐) as "crocodile."

First, the mythical sea god Kotoshiro-nushi-no-kami (see Ebisu) is described as a ya-hiro no kuma-wani 八尋熊鰐 "8-fathom bear-wani".

Kuma-wani addressed the Emperor, saying: "It is not the fault of thy servant that the august ship is unable to advance.

When the Empress saw these fishes and birds sporting, her anger was gradually appeased, and with the flowing tide she straightway anchored in the harbour of Oka.

He refers to the Ryūjin 龍神 "dragon god", his daughter Toyotama-hime 豊玉姫 "luminous jewel princess" (who married the Japanese imperial ancestor Hoori or Hohodemi), Dragon King myths, and the scholar Wani who served Emperor Ōjin.

Bear (in Japanese kuma) is no doubt an epithet indicating size, as in kuma-bachi, bear-bee or bear-wasp, i.e. a hornet; kuma-gera, a large kind of wood-pecker, etc.

Why should the ancient Japanese or Koreans have called these sea-monsters "kings", omitting the word "dragon", which is the most important part of the combined term "dragon-king"?

The oldest version probably related how Hohodemi went to the sea-god, married his daughter and obtained from him the two jewels of ebb and flood [i.e., tide jewels], or some other means to punish his brother by nearly drowning him; afterwards, when having returned to the earth, he built the parturition-house, and breaking his promise of not looking at his wife when she was giving birth, saw that she had changed into a wani, i.e. an enormous sea-monster.

[8]De Visser additionally compared the Japanese Hoori/Hohodemi legend with Indonesian myths from the Kei Islands and Minahassa Peninsula.

Probably the foreign invaders, who in prehistoric times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia and brought this myth with them.

In the Minahassa legend, however, he dives into the sea and arrives at a village at the bottom of the water.

[18] Smith disagreed with de Visser, "The wani or crocodile thus introduced from India, via Indonesia, is really the Chinese and Japanese dragon, as Aston has claimed.