Note 23 — Chapter XVIII · Japanese Gods and Dragons

It is of interest to note here that other dragon deities to which Izanagi and Izanami gave origin, included the mizuchi or “water fathers”, which are referred to as “horned deities”, “four-legged dragons”, or “large water-snakes”. As Aston notes,23 these “water fathers” had no individual names; they were prayed to for rain in times of drought. Another sea-dragon child of the great couple was the wani, which appears to have been a combination of crocodile and shark. Aston thinks that wani is a Korean word. De Visser, on the other hand, is of opinion that the wani is the old Japanese dragon-god or sea-god, and that the legend about the Abundant Pearl Princess (Toyo-tama-bime)24 who had a human lover and, like Melusina, transformed herself from human shape into that of a wani (Ko-ji-ki) or a dragon (Nihon-gi), was originally a Japanese serpent-dragon, which was “dressed in Indian garb by later generations”.25 Florenz, the German Orientalist, thinks the legend is of Chinese origin, but a similar one is found in Indonesia. “Wani,” De Visser says, “may be an Indonesian word,” and it is possible, as he suggests, that “foreign invaders, who in prehistoric times conquered Japan, came from Indonesia and brought the myth with them.”26