Japanese dragon (ryū)
The dragon (ryū, or tatsu) of Japanese art and belief: a scaled, serpent-bodied creature from China that rules water, rain and the sea. Japanese art usually gives it three claws on each foot.
Meaning
JAANUS, a dictionary of Japanese art, describes the dragon as a mythological animal of Chinese origin, covered with scales, with a long serpentine body, a scalloped fin along its back, clawed feet and a pointed tail, and a face of small horns, large eyes under bushy brows, flaring nostrils, long whiskers and sharp teeth. It lives in water and comes out of clouds to bring rain. Basil Hall Chamberlain, in 1905, called it Chinese by origin but thoroughly at home in Japan, and Henri Joly in 1908 found it the creature most often shown in Japanese art. In Japan the dragon belongs to Shinto as the dragon kami of water and the sea, and to Buddhism as a guardian of the Buddha’s teaching.
Origin and history
The Encyclopedia of Shinto draws a line between the Chinese dragon and the one Japanese people prayed to. Ryūjin worship was influenced by China, it says, but the Japanese dragon as an object of faith was a deified snake, a symbol of a water kami (suijin). It goes by ryūjin, “dragon kami”, ryūō, “dragon king”, and ryūgū, “dragon palace”. In JAANUS’s history, the dragon reached Japan well before Chinese ink painting did, appearing in handscrolls such as the Chōjū jinbutsu giga.
Three claws, four or five
Joly gives the rule collectors of his day went by: the ordinary Japanese dragon has three claws on each foot, the ordinary Chinese dragon four, and the imperial dragon five, which is also found in Japanese art. He also quotes the Chinese description of a dragon made of nine animals, with a camel’s head, a deer’s horns, a carp’s scales, a tiger’s paws and an eagle’s claws.
The dragon kami of rain and the sea
Prayers for rain, the Encyclopedia of Shinto records, were held at rivers, swamps, ponds and deep pools where the ryūjin was thought to live, and rain rites used a straw rope shaped like a dragon. As a water kami, the encyclopedia adds, the dragon goes together with raijin, the thunder kami who brings rain and lightning. Fishermen prayed to it for a good catch and calm seas, and held it taboo to drop metal into the sea. The dragon king’s palace under the sea is the setting of folk tales such as Urashima Tarō, and Chamberlain describes it as a marvellously rich palace many leagues beneath the waves.
Dragons in temples
By the ninth century, JAANUS explains, Chinese Buddhism had made the dragon a protector of the Buddhas and their teaching, and the character for dragon is common in temple names. Zen temples paired dragons with tigers, and the ink paintings by Muqi at Daitokuji in Kyoto were the model for countless Japanese versions. Japanese dragon painting peaked with the Kanō and Kaihō artists of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. JAANUS reports the common suggestion that these were pictures of heroic leadership, since the dragon calling up rain was a metaphor for a wise ruler seeking able ministers.
The carp that became a dragon
In a Chinese legend popular in Japan, a carp that swims up a waterfall turns into a dragon, the subject of the Koi (carp climbing the waterfall).
Read next
- Next in Japanese symbolsKoi (carp climbing the waterfall)A carp (koi) leaping up a waterfall is the Japanese picture of effort rewarded: in a Chinese legend, the carp that climbs the falls turns into a dragon. Families fly carp-shaped streamers (koinobori) for their children around 5 May.
- In Yōkai and creatures of Japanese folkloreKappaThe kappa is the water imp of Japan’s rivers and ponds: child-sized, with a beak, a shell, webbed hands and a hollow on its head that holds the water of its strength. It drags people and horses into the water, and loves cucumbers and sumo.
See also
Kirin, Raijin and Fūjin (thunder and wind), Mount Fuji, Year of the Dragon, Dragons across cultures, Dragon.
Sources
- ryuu (JAANUS), JAANUS: Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System, “ryuu”, JAANUS (Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System), entry text
- Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art (1908), Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art: A Description of Historical Episodes, Legendary Characters, Folk-lore, Myths, Religious Symbolism Illustrated in the Arts of Old Japan, London: John Lane, 1908, John Lane (Internet Archive, University of Toronto copy), no. 175, “Dragon”
- Ryūjin shinkō (Encyclopedia of Shinto), Encyclopedia of Shinto, Kokugakuin University, “Ryūjin shinkō” (Iwai Hiroshi), Kokugakuin University, entry text
- Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese (1905), Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan, fifth edition, London: John Murray, 1905, John Murray (Internet Archive, University of Toronto copy), pp. 443–444, “Superstitions”
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
Added .