Kiyohime

Kiyohime is the woman of Japanese legend who, rejected by a young monk, turned into a great serpent, swam the Hidaka River, and burned him alive inside the bell of Dōjōji temple.

The Story

The oldest version appears in a collection of Buddhist miracle tales compiled around 1040 by the monk Chingen, and again in the Konjaku monogatari shū about eighty years later. Two monks on pilgrimage to the Kumano shrines spend the night at the house of a widow in Kii Province. She falls in love with the younger, handsome monk and comes to him in the night. To escape her, he promises to return after his pilgrimage, then takes another road home.

When she learns she has been deceived, she shuts herself in her room and dies, and from the room a huge serpent emerges. It races after the monk. He flees to Dōjōji temple, where the monks hide him under the great temple bell. The serpent finds the bell, wraps its coils around it, and strikes it with its tail. Flames pour from its body, and when the monks finally lift the bell, nothing is left of the young man but ash. In a dream an old monk later learns that both have been reborn as snakes, and he copies the Lotus Sutra to free them.

Later versions give the lovers names. The monk is called Anchin by the 14th century, and the woman becomes Kiyohime only in 18th-century puppet plays, the daughter of an innkeeper or village head. In many tellings she crosses the Hidaka River in serpent form when the ferryman refuses to carry her.

Appearance and Powers

Early texts describe a great poisonous serpent, and later picture scrolls show a woman whose body turns step by step into a fire-breathing dragon-serpent with horns. Her power comes from rage and obsession, not magic learned or inherited. The burning heat that melts the bell is the fire of her jealousy made real.

Meaning

The tale was told as a Buddhist warning about desire and attachment, and also as proof of the Lotus Sutra's power to save even such souls. Modern readers often see it as a story about broken promises and the dangers of female rage as medieval monks imagined it.

Legacy

The legend inspired the Noh play Dōjōji, in which a dancer leaps into a falling bell and emerges as a serpent demon, and the kabuki dance Kyōganoko Musume Dōjōji (1753). Dōjōji temple still keeps an illustrated scroll of the story and tells it to visitors. Compare other Japanese serpents on our Dragons Across Cultures page.

Related

• Yamata no Orochi: Yamata no Orochi is the eight-headed, eight-tailed giant serpent of Japanese myth, slain by the storm god Susanoo after he got it drunk on strong sake, who found the sacred sword Kusanagi in its tail.
• Melusine: Melusine is a fairy of medieval French legend who becomes a serpent from the waist down every Saturday, founds the house of Lusignan, and flies away in the form of a great serpent when her husband betrays her secret.
• Ryūjin: Ryūjin is the dragon god of the sea in Japanese myth and folklore, who rules from the undersea palace Ryūgū-jō, controls the tides with magic jewels, and was claimed as an ancestor of the imperial family.
• Mizuchi: A mizuchi is a Japanese water dragon or river serpent, a spirit of rivers and pools that could bring rain or spit poison, best known from the Nihon Shoki tale of Agatamori, who killed one with gourds and a sword.
• Dragons Across Cultures
• Dragon Legends

Sources and Further Reading

• Yoshiko K. Dykstra, trans., Miraculous Tales of the Lotus Sutra from Ancient Japan: The Dainihonkoku Hokekyōkenki of Priest Chingen (Kansai University of Foreign Studies, 1983; University of Hawaii Press, 1987)
• Susan Blakeley Klein, "When the Moon Strikes the Bell: Desire and Enlightenment in the Noh Play Dōjōji," Journal of Japanese Studies 17, no. 2 (1991)
• M. W. de Visser, The Dragon in China and Japan (Amsterdam: Johannes Müller, 1913)

Cite this entry: “Kiyohime,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/kiyohime.