Eastern Dragon

八岐大蛇 · Eight-Headed Serpent of Japanese Myth

Yamata-no-Orochi ('eight-forked great serpent') is the most iconic many-headed dragon-serpent of Japanese myth, recorded in the early eighth century in the two foundational chronicles of the Japanese state: the 'Kojiki' (712) compiled by Ō no Yasumaro and the 'Nihon Shoki' (720) compiled under Prince Toneri. The serpent has eight heads and eight tails, and its body is so vast that it covers 'eight valleys and eight ridges, with cypress and cedar growing on its back and its belly always inflamed and bleeding'. It appears each year along the Hi no Kawa (today's Hii River) in the Izumo region (eastern Shimane prefecture) and demands one of the daughters of the old couple Ashinazuchi and Tenazuchi as tribute. After devouring seven of their eight daughters, it returns for the last, Kushinada-hime, when the storm-god Susanoo, banished from heaven, descends to Izumo. Susanoo prepares yashiori-no-sake (a wine brewed and refined eight times, sometimes called 'eight-fold wine'), pours it into eight large vats placed before eight gates so that each of Orochi's eight heads will drink from a separate vat, and waits until the eight heads are dead drunk. He then severs all eight heads and eight tails with the divine sword Totsuka-no-Tsurugi (a sword 'ten hand-spans long'). When one tail dulls his blade, he finds inside it another, finer sword — the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi (also Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi), one of the Three Sacred Treasures of the Japanese imperial house, today enshrined at Atsuta Shrine in Nagoya, Aichi prefecture.

The Imperial Dragon of Chinese Myth

The Chinese long is the archetypal East-Asian dragon, the source from which the Korean cheongnyong, the Japanese ryu and the Vietnamese long descend. Its image runs unbroken from the Neolithic — the C-shaped jade dragon of Hongshan culture (c. 3500-3000 BCE, excavated at Ongniud Banner, Inner Mongolia, in 1971, now a national first-class cultural relic in the National Museum of China) and the shell-mosaic dragon at the Xishuipo site of the Yangshao culture in Puyang (excavated 1987, c. 5300 BCE) — through Xu Shen's 'Shuowen Jiezi' (100 CE), which defined the dragon as 'chief of the scaled creatures', Wang Fu's 'Qianfu Lun' of the late Han, which first codified the 'nine resemblances' (deer antlers, camel head, rabbit eyes, snake neck, clam belly, carp scales, eagle talons, tiger soles), and Li Shizhen's 'Bencao Gangmu' (1578). The five-toed foot was fixed as the imperial monogram by an edict of the Hongwu emperor in 1393 and remained so through the Qing; princes were limited to four toes and commoners to three. The long is arranged in a five-direction colour system — Azure Dragon (East), White (West), Vermilion (South), Black (North), Yellow (Centre) — and is held to bring rain, govern rivers and embody cosmic justice; it is the only mythical creature in the twelve-animal cycle, and a child born in a Dragon year is reckoned to share the emperor's auspice.

The Aspiring Dragon

The imugi is the Korean 'unrealised dragon', a great serpent that must endure a thousand years of practice in deep pools, beneath waterfalls and in hidden caves, accumulating moral merit before it can earn the wish-fulfilling pearl (yeouiju) and ascend as a true dragon. It is depicted as a serpent of immense thickness and scale, with a faint pair of nascent horns on its brow; the same image recurs in folktales collected across South Pyongan, Gangwon and South Jeolla provinces. The earliest Korean-language textual mention is in the 'Sun-o-ji' (1678) of Hong Man-jong (1643-1725), while the most systematic ethnographic record is the field collection of Son Jin-tae (1900-1950?) — published as 'Researches on Korean Folk Narratives' (1947) — and Im Seok-jae's 'Collection of Korean Oral Tales' (Pyongminsa, twelve volumes, 1987-1993), which classifies more than two hundred imugi tales under the 'imugi and the maiden' and 'dragon-pool' types. The Standard Korean Dictionary defines it as 'a great snake that failed to become a dragon', and Korean folklorists treat it as a fusion of the Chinese 'jiao' serpent-dragon with native Korean serpent cults. The image was modernised in the manhwa 'Yongbi the Invincible' / 'Land of the Wind' (Kim Jin, 1992-), in the Hollywood-style blockbuster 'D-War' (2007) directed by Shim Hyung-rae, and in Jeong Ju-yeon's 'Myojin Imugi' (2014).

The Divine Dragon of Korean Myth

The Korean yong is the indigenous Korean dragon, a benevolent water-deity occupying a distinct position within the East-Asian dragon tradition. It is depicted with a long serpentine body, the branched antlers of a deer, the scales of a carp, the talons of a hawk, the soles of a tiger and — most decisively — four toes on each foot, which mark Korea's rank between the five-toed Chinese imperial long and the three-toed Japanese ryu. The earliest extant records are the dragon-deity passages of Iryeon's 'Samguk Yusa' (1281), book I 'Strange Affairs', particularly the entries on Dongmyeong, King Suro and King Munmu, and the dragon iconography on the Baekje and Silla roof-tile-ends of the fifth and sixth centuries. In Korean myth, the yong is the form an imugi attains after a millennium of practice when it finally wins the wish-fulfilling pearl (yeouiju). The image runs through the royal dragon robe (gollyongpo) of King Jeongjo (reigned 1776-1800, National Palace Museum of Korea) and the twin golden dragons on the throne ceiling of the Geunjeongjeon hall of Gyeongbokgung Palace (founded 1395, rebuilt 1865) and is the antithesis of the malevolent Western dragon — fundamentally good, generous and bound to bring rain to the fields.

靑龍 · Eastern Guardian of the Four Symbols

The Azure Dragon (Chinese 'Qinglong', Korean 'Cheongnyong', Japanese 'Seiryu') is the eastern guardian of the East-Asian Four Symbols (sasin / Sishen), the celestial dragon governing the East, the spring, the Wood phase of the five elements and the colour green-blue. The system — Azure Dragon of the East, White Tiger of the West, Vermilion Bird of the South, Black Tortoise of the North — was codified under the Han dynasty, in particular the 'Huainanzi' (c. 139 BCE) of Liu An and Wang Chong's 'Lunheng' (c. 80 CE), and unifies the seven lunar mansions of the eastern quadrant (Jiao, Kang, Di, Fang, Xin, Wei, Ji). Visually the Azure Dragon is distinguished from the imperial yellow long by a slimmer, more serpentine body, a green-blue scale-pattern, branched deer-style antlers and carp scales; it is the canonical image of the geomantic principle that the dragon of the East guards the left side of a settlement. The best-preserved early representations are the eastern murals of the Goguryeo tombs Gangseo Daemyo and Jungmyo (late sixth century, South Pyongan, North Korea) and the late-seventh- to early-eighth-century Kitora Tomb (Asuka village, Nara prefecture, Japan, recognised as a National Treasure in 1998). The Azure Dragon also names the Cheongwadae presidential residence in Korea ('house of green tiles', built 1939) and watches over the Eastern Flowery Gate (Donghuamen) of the Forbidden City completed in 1420.

The Sea Dragon of Japanese Myth

The Ryū is the Japanese dragon, descended from the Chinese long imported via Buddhism in the sixth century and fused with native serpent and water cults. The most visible mark of its lower rank in the East-Asian dragon hierarchy is the three-toed foot, contrasted with the five-toed Chinese imperial dragon and the four-toed Korean dragon. The most celebrated ryū in the corpus is Yamata-no-Orochi, the eight-headed, eight-tailed serpent recorded in the Kojiki (712, compiled by Ō no Yasumaro) and the Nihon Shoki (720), defeated by the storm god Susanoo-no-Mikoto after being made drunk on rice wine; from its tail emerged the sword Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, one of the three imperial regalia. The dragon king Ryūjin commands sea and storm and reigns over Ryūgū-jō, the undersea palace to which the fisherman Urashima Tarō is led. The ryū is a fixture of temple and shrine ceiling paintings — most famously Kanō Tan'yū's 'Naki-Ryū' (1640s) at Nikkō Tōshō-gū — and of ukiyo-e prints such as Hokusai's 'Hundred Views of Mount Fuji' (1834).