Crow symbolism
In Japanese myth the Yatagarasu, a great crow sent from heaven to guide the first emperor, now the emblem of Japan’s national football teams. In Roman and English omen lore, and in North Carolina folk belief, a crow’s cry or flight overhead was more often a sign of bad luck or death.
Meaning
Where the crow is a good sign, it is a guide. Kokugakuin University notes that crows scavenging rubbish may frighten people, but “the crows that appear in myths, however, are very reliable”, and the Yatagarasu leads the first emperor of Japan through the mountains of Kumano. In the Roman and English writing that John Brand gathered in 1853, a crow on the left hand or croaking over a house foretold bad luck or a death. The crow’s real behaviour has added a modern reading: researchers at the University of Washington found that crows gather round their dead, which looks like mourning and which the researchers believe is a way of learning about danger.
Origin and history
The ancient Japanese chronicles, the Kojiki and the Nihon shoki, tell of the Yatagarasu. The Japan Tourism Agency describes it as a servant of Amaterasu, goddess of the sun, sent to guide the legendary first emperor, Jimmu, from Kumano to present-day Nara, where he founded the first capital. In the Kojiki’s telling, as Kokugakuin University retells it, the future emperor and his men had suffered so many setbacks that “the god of heaven decided to send the Yatagarasu to them as a guide”.
The famous three legs are later. “The name Yatagarasu simply means large crow,” Kokugakuin writes, and the myths say nothing of three legs; it is believed the form came from the Chinese belief in a three-legged crow that lives in the sun. The three Kumano shrines, Hongu Taisha, Hayatama Taisha and Nachi Taisha, worship the Yatagarasu as a messenger of the gods and show it with three legs, and so do the emblems of the Japan Football Association and its national teams. The Japan Tourism Agency says the emblem honours Nakamura Kakunosuke (1878–1906), born in Katsuura, who first translated the rules of football into Japanese.
Crows in Japanese custom
Crows have a mixed name in Japan too. Sei Shōnagon, a poet of the Heian period, put swarms of crying crows on her list of “hateful things” in The Pillow Book. Other customs make them bearers of fortune: people tell fortunes by how crows peck at offerings, and in rituals called Karasu Kanjo rice cakes are offered to crows as a way of divining the harvest. Kokugakuin concludes that crows are “also auspicious birds that can lead people to happiness and good fortune”.
Crows as omens in Roman and English writing
Brand’s Popular Antiquities quotes Pennant: Virgil “says that its croaking foreboded rain. It was also thought a bird of bad omen”, especially if seen on the left hand. The Earl of Northampton wrote in 1583 that “the flight of many crowes upon the left side of the campe” made the Romans “very much afrayde of some badde lucke”. Bourne wrote, “If a crow cry, it portends some evil,” and another writer quoted by Brand: “If a crow fly but over the house and croak thrice, how do they fear, they, or some one else in the family, shall die.” Butler’s Hudibras puts the crow beside the Raven symbolism: “Is it not om’nous in all countries / When crows and ravens croak upon trees?”
Crows in North American folk belief
The North Carolina entries in the Frank C. Brown collection are milder. Seeing a crow in flight is a chance to make a wish, which comes true if it does not flap its wings before it goes out of sight; and “It is unlucky to have crows fly overhead.” Among the Cherokee, James Mooney found no crow lore at all: “The crow, so prominent in other tribal mythologies, does not seem to appear in that of the Cherokee.”
Do crows hold funerals?
Crows do gather round a dead crow, but the scientists who study it think the gathering is about danger, not grief. Audubon magazine describes crows as birds that solve complex problems, remember human faces and hold grudges, and that flock to their dead “in a behavior that looks like mourning, but which scientists suspect is closer to reconnaissance”. Kaeli Swift and John Marzluff of the University of Washington believe the birds are learning about threats in the area.
Related birds
The Raven symbolism is the crow’s partner in English omen lore; the Owl symbolism is the other bird whose cry was taken as a death omen.
See also
Raven symbolism, Owl symbolism, Cardinal symbolism, Hummingbird symbolism, Hawk symbolism, Blue jay symbolism.
Sources
- The Yatagarasu: The Three-legged Crow That Guided Emperor Jimmu on his Journey (Kokugakuin University), Kokugakuin University, Encyclopedia of Shinto and Japanese culture articles (English), Kokugakuin University
- Yatagarasu, the Three-Legged Crow (Japan Tourism Agency), Japan Tourism Agency, multilingual commentary database, Kumano Nachi Taisha, Japan Tourism Agency
- Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (John Brand, ed. Henry Ellis, 1853), John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, arranged and revised by Sir Henry Ellis, vol. 3 (London: Bohn, 1853), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), The Raven and the Crow, pp. 211-213
- The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 (Wayland D. Hand, ed., 1964), Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina, part 2, ed. Wayland D. Hand (Durham: Duke University Press, 1964), Internet Archive (Duke University Library copy), Nos. 7287, 7288
- Think Crow Funerals Are Strange? Wait Until You See the Wake (Audubon), Audubon magazine, National Audubon Society
- Myths of the Cherokee (James Mooney, 1900), James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, Project Gutenberg, Introduction; notes on bird lore
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research