The Dragon: Tawara Toda Enters the Dragon Palace

For the Year of the Dragon in 1916 Minakata Kumagusu took up the old Japanese tale of the warrior Tawara Tōda, who helped a dragon king against the giant centipede of Mount Mikami and was rewarded with a visit to the dragon palace. From that story he moves outward to parallels in Chinese, Indian, Arabic and European lore and to the natural history of the creatures behind the dragon: crocodiles, snakes and lizards. A learned, wandering, humorous masterpiece of Japanese comparative folklore.

This edition is a complete, unabridged New English Translation made directly from the Japanese, with endnotes identifying sources, persons and period terms.

AI-assisted translation.