Japanese dragon

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A Japanese dragon, also known as ryū or tatsu (竜 or 龍, "dragon") is a legendary creature from Japan. Like other creatures refered to as dragons, the ryū is a large, fantastic, serpent-like being, and is closely related to the Chinese lóng and the Korean yong. Like these it is usually depicted as a wingless, heavily-scaled snake-like creature with small clawed legs and a horned or antlered mammalian head, and is associated with large bodies of water, clouds or the heavens. The ryū in art can generally be distinguished from other East-Asian dragons in that it has only three toes, rather than the lóng's five or the yong's four.

One of the first dragon-like creatures in Japanese myth is the Yamata-no-Orochi, an enormous girl-devouring serpent with eight heads and eight tails which was slain by Susanoo.

Dragons in later Japanese folklore were often much more benign, perhaps because of a heavy influence from China. They appear in famous tales such as My Lord Bag of Rice, in which a hero must kill a giant centipede which is devouring the children of the dragon king of Lake Biwa. In Urashima Tarō, the title character rescues a turtle which turns out to be the daughter of Ryūjin, the dragon king of the ocean.

[edit] In popular culture

Modern Japanese popular culture often refers to dragons, ascribing to them magical powers such as healing, flying, or assuming a human form at will. Examples include:


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