Note 27 — Chapter XVIII · Japanese Gods and Dragons

There is a reference in the Nihon-gi (Chapter I) to a “bear-wani, eight fathoms long”, and it has been suggested that “bear” means here nothing more than “strong”.27 The Ainu, however, as we have seen (Chapter XVII), associated bear and dragon deities; the bear-goddess was the wife of the dragon-god, and that goddess had, like the Abundant Pearl Princess, a human lover. “Bear-wani” may therefore have been a bear-dragon. There was a dragon-horse “with a long neck and wings at its sides”, which flew through the air, and did not sink when it trod upon the water,28 and there were withal Japanese crow-dragons, toad-dragons, fish-dragons, and lizard-dragons.