The is a type of Japanese dragon or legendary serpent-like creature, either found in an aquatic habitat or otherwise connected to water. Some commentators perceived it to have been a water deity. It is described in the Nihon Shoki and one Man'yōshū poem.
Etymology
In olden times pronounced
mi-tsu-chi, the word can be broken down to
mi "water" +
tsu a particle meaning "of" +
chi "spirit". The
-chi is glossed as a word root used only as a part of a compound word (as a
suffix, etc.)
Chinese character representation
Mizuchi is also the
kun-yomi for several Chinese
glyphs, each glyph putatively representing a type of
Chinese dragon: namely the
jiaolong (; ) or "4-legged dragon", the
qiulong ( or ; ) or "hornless dragon" and the
chilong (; ) or "yellow dragon".
F. J. Daniels cautions that for 龗 and mizuchi, "it is unsafe to deduce their forms from the Chinese characters allotted to them". Kunio Yanagita also emphasized that while the use of character like 虬 may suggest a snake-like being, it should be stressed that the mizuchi signifies a "water spirit".
Early references
The ancient chronicle
Nihongi contains references to
mizuchi. Under the 67th year of the reign of
Emperor Nintoku (conventionally dated 379 AD), it is mentioned that in central
Kibi Province, at a fork on Kawashima River (川嶋河, old name of
Takahashi River in Okayama Prefecture), a great water serpent or dragon (大虬) dwelt and would breathe or spew out its venom, poisoning and killing many passersby.
This mizuchi was exterminated by a man named , ancestor of the clan. He approached the pool of the river, cast three which floated to the surface of the water and challenged the beast to make these gourds sink, threatening to slay it should it fail. The beast transformed into a deer and tried unsuccessfully to sink them, whereby the man slew the monster. The record goes on to say: "...He further sought out the water-dragon's fellows. Now the tribe of all the water-dragons filled a cave in the bottom of the pool. He slew them every one and the water of the river became changed to blood. Therefore that water was called the pool of Agatamori".[Tr. .]
A river-god reported seen in Nintoku 11 (putatively 323 AD) is also regarded by commentators to be a mizuchi, due to paralleling circumstances. On that year, the built along Yodo River kept getting breached and the Emperor guided by an oracular dream ordered two men, Kowa-kubi from Musashi Province and Koromo-no-ko from Kawachi Province, be sought out and sacrificed to the " River God" or . One of the men, who resisted being sacrificed, employed the floating calabash and dared the River God to sink it as proof to show it was truly divine will that demanded him as sacrifice. A whirlwind came and tried, but the calabash just floated away, and thus he extricated himself from death using his wits. Although River God is not called mizuchi in the source, Aston has regarded the River God (Kawa-no-kami) and the mizuchi as equivalent.
concludes, "From this passage, we learn that in ancient times human sacrifices were made to the dragon-shaped river-gods". Michael Dylan Foster
suggests this is "perhaps the first documented appearance of the water spirit that would become known popularly in Japan as the kappa".
A mizuchi is also mentioned in the Man'yōshū, the ancient collection of Japanese poems. The tanka poem #3833 composed by [ Man'yōshū #3833 by Prince Saikabe, original text:"虎尓乗 古屋乎越而 青淵尓 鮫龍取将来 劒刀毛我"] can be loosely paraphrased to mean "I could ride a tiger to leap over the Old Shack, to the green pool, to take down the mizuchi dragon there, if only I had a sword capable of doing just that".
Folklorist studies
Polymath Minakata Kumagusu, in his essay "A Study of Twelve Animals of Chinese Zodiac" states "Even in our country (Japan), the various snakes that dwelled by water and were feared by people seemed to have been called
mizuchi, or 'master of the water'". Here Minakata draws on
Edo Period scholar
Motoori Norinaga' suggestion that the
-chi signified an
honorific. As stated above folklorist
Kunio Yanagita emphasized the meaning of
chi as "spirit".
Corruption into kappa
Minakata also conjectured that in some parts of the country,
mizuchi eventually came to be regarded as creatures of the
kappa kind. This is because the
kappa creatures are known locally by many names that sound much like
mizuchi, such as
mizushi (former
Noto Province, Ishikawa Prefecture),
medochi (
Nanbu Domain region, parts of
Iwate Prefecture, Aomori,
Akita Prefecture),
mintsuchi (
Ezo, now
Hokkaido).
Furthermore, in the lore of Echigo Province (Niigata Prefecture), the kappa was said to abhor the calabash gourd,[Yanagita, Kunio (1914), Santō mintan shū, p. 84, cited by Minakata] which is reminiscent of the episodes in Nihon Shoki where the River God or mizuchi are challenged to submerge the calabashes. Similar observations are made by folklorists Yanagita and Jun'ichirō Ishikawa.
Minakata was also encouraged by the fact that the snake and the kappa (alongside the suppon soft-shelled turtle) were grouped as three creatures known to kill humans in water by 's essay Zen'an zuihitsu and conjectured that there used to be lore where sacred snakes which were "masters of the body of water" would transform into human form and wreak havoc, but terms such as mizushi became reserved for the kappa-kind, whereas the terms to refer to the "masters of the body of water" as mizuchi became forgotten.
In popular culture
- (vehicles, vessels)
-
(), (synonymous with mizuchi), an ex-Japanese Navy submarine.
-
Jiaolong (), a Chinese deep-ocean submersible.
- (novels)
-
水霊 ミズチ]]』, a 1998 horror novel by and its 2006 horror movie adaptation directed by , entitled "Death Water" in English, though theme is "water spirit" and not dragon.
-
(novel) – A man named 水池 is an allusion.
-
In Andrew Rowe's Arcane Ascension series, Mizuchi, also known as Hero's End or Guardian of Secrets, is a giant water serpent, spire guardian of the Serpent Spire, and one of the God Serpent's daughters.
- (manga, anime)
-
Eight Clouds Rising – "Watersnake" is one of seven divine swords.
-
GeGeGe no Kitaro (manga, anime) – a kōryū (syn. mizuchi) appears as adversary.
-
Omamori Himari (manga, novella, anime) – the character Shizuku is a mizuchi.
-
Our Home's Fox Deity. – A miko priestess is possessed by a mizuchi.
-
Samurai Deeper Kyo (manga) – Demon Eyes Kyo uses an attack called " mizuchi" in his sword fighting style. Compare Japanese kōryū or kōryō 蛟竜 "rain dragon; hidden genius; Kaiten torpedo".
-
Noragami (manga, anime) – the character Nora is called Mizuchi by Father and is frequently shown walking over water.
-
Spirited Away (anime, movie) – the character Haku looks like a Mizuchi and he is a river spirit.
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Inuyasha (manga) - the character a snake yokai called Mizuchi using its spit venom and poison mist.
-
(anime) - the character a snake yokai called Mizuchi using its spit venom and poison mist.
- (games)
-
(game) – player character becomes kōryū (one of the true dragons) when certain conditions are met.
-
Monster Hunter 2 (PS 2) – an elder dragon type named Ōnazuchi is a take on mizuchi; named Chameleos in English-language platforms.
-
Neo Geo Battle Coliseum (game) – a boss character named Mizuchi, a clone of Orochi from The King of Fighters '97
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Ōkamiden (game) – a water dragon boss that used to be the guardian of a seaside village.
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Nioh 2 (game) – there is a water dragon guardian spirit called Mizuchi that the player can be imbued to characters to gain protection and special effects.
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(game) - The antagonist and final boss is a three headed water dragon named Omizuchi. The prefix o- is a Japanese honorific (keigo).
See also
Explanatory notes
- (primary sources)
- (Secondary sources)
Footnotes
