84 



trips, on which occasions music was made on board, the bird 

 was painted, not to denote their swift sailing, but to suppress 

 the water-gods, if we may believe the commentary to a passage 



J of the Wen siien '. It seems that the ships represented dragons 

 with yih-heads, and that the "dragon-ornarherits" were the 

 dragon's scales, carved on the sides of the vessels. 



The Japanese courtiers of the eleventh century, however, who 

 wanted to imitate all the customs prevailing at the Chinese court, 



. did not understand the words of the Hwai nan tsze and had two 

 kinds of ships made which they called in one term: "Dragon- 

 heads (and) Yih-heads'", f 1 1§ 1^ "^ , " Ryoto-gekisu". The combi- 

 nation of thesp two words reminds us of the term " shishi-komainu" ■> 

 used at the Japanese Court in the same age to denote the images of 

 the lion and the unicorn, not separately but as one name for 

 both together ^ Therefore I would be inclined to think that the 



J term Ryoto-gehisu originally denoted one kind of ships, adorned 

 with a dragon-head in front and a yih-head behind, if a passage 

 of the Jikhinsho ^ did not state that on the occasion of a pleasure 

 trip in the Emperor Shirakawa's time (1072 — 1086), "Koresue 

 played the flute on board of the 'dragon-head', but there was 

 no flute playing on board of the 'yih-head'". As to Murasaki 

 Shikibu's Diary *, where we read that the new ships were very 

 beautiful, and the Hamamatsu Chunagon Monogatari^, these works 

 of the beginning and the middl6 of the eleventh century, as well 

 as the Mgwa monogatari" (about 1100), which states that the 

 Emperor made a pleasure trip with '■'■rydto-gekisu'", seem to speak 

 of one kind of ships. The Kagahushu \ however, which dates 



1 "^ j^ , Sect, ^fi ^K ^^ , compiled in the first half of the sixth century of 



our era by SrAO T'^ong, ^ j^ ; quoted in the Kokushi daijiien, B| ^ -1r ^^ 



^ffi , p. 2338, s. V. §g flj |j& g* jlft , Ryuzu (mistake instead of ryoto) gekisu 

 no fune. 



2 Cf. my treatise on "The Dog and the Cat in Japanese Superstition", Transactions 

 of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. XXXVII, Part I, pp. 54—62. 



3 -j- =fjj j^^ written shortly after 1252; Ch. X, K. T. K. Vol. XV, p. 823. 



4 Written from 1008 to 1010; Gunsho ruiju, nr 321, Vol. XI, p. 591. 



^ ^i # 4* '^^ W #1 ^' ^'•"^" ^y SUGAWARA KOHYO {^ j^,^^)'^ 



(Jaughter (born in] 1008), consort of FujiwaRA no Toshimitsu (^ ^, who died in 

 1058); Ch. I. 



6 ^ ^ i^ ^- Ch. XX (:^^ ^), K. T. K. Vol. XV, p. 1344; Ch. VIII, p. 1078. 



7 ~^ ^ ^, written in 1444 by the Buddhist priest Shaku no Hattotsu, 



W^ ab m, : Ch. mwt 



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