, is a creature with both human and fish-like features, described in various pieces of Japanese literature.
Though often translated as "mermaid", the term is technically not gender-specific and may include the "mermen". The literal translation "human-fish" has also been applied.
Overview
The earliest records of the ningyo attested in written Japanese sources are freshwater beings allegedly captured in the 7th century (§Asuka period), documented later in the Nihon Shoki. But subsequent examples are usually seawater beings.
In later medieval times (§Kamakura and Muromachi periods)), it was held to be a sign of ill omen, and its beaching (§Omens in Michinoku) was blamed for subsequent bloody battles or calamity.
The notion that eating its flesh imparts longevity is attached to the legend of the ('eight hundred [year old] Buddhist priestess', cf. §Yao Bikuni)
During the Edo period, the ningyo was made the subject of burlesque gesaku novels (cf. §Saikaku, 1687 and Santō Kyōden's §Hakoiri musume, 1791). There were also preserved ningyo being manufactured using fish parts (§Mummies or Feejee mermaids), and illustrated by some scholars of the period (e.g. §Baien gyofu); some such mummies are held by certain temples that have ningyo legend attached to them (cf. §Prince Shōtoku).
The description of the ningyo as having a red cockscomb (§Shokoku rijindan, and Saikaku) or light red hair (§Kasshi yawa) corroborates the hypothesis that oarfish sightings led to ningyo lore.
One giant ningyo was allegedly shot in 1805, even though it was held to be lucky, according to the news circulated in kawaraban pamphlet form (§Kairai)
Terminology The Japanese has been glossed in a noted dictionary (Kojien) as a "fabulous creature" which is "half woman, half fish", later revised to "half human (usually woman) and half fish". Hence the term ningyo includes not just the mermaid but the merman also.
Accordingly, the ningyo is sometimes referred to by the verbatim translation "human-fish" in English-language scholarship, thus allowing for the gender ambiguity.
The term ningyo was not explicitly used in the earliest accounts (cf. §Asuka period, year 619) recorded in the Nihon shoki (720 AD). A later embellished account in involving Prince Shōtoku claims that the Prince Regent knew the term ningyo, though this is regarded with skepticism. The term ningyo was likely absent from any of the primary sources used in compiling the Shoki, and nonexistent in the Japanese vocabulary during the Prince's time. apud
The term ningyo was also absent in medieval sources describing the Kamakura Period strandings in northern Japan §Omens in Michinoku) considered ominous. For example, a "large fish" washed ashore in the Hōji 1 (1247) according to 13th and 14th century texts. But these were called ningyo in a 17th-century recompilation.
Zoological hypotheses
The earliest examples (cf. §Asuka period) were caught in fresh water, and it has been hypothesized they must have actually been giant salamanders.Kumagusu Minakata (1973) , p. 306. also cited by .
Another prominent theory is that the misidentification of the dugong led to mermaid lore, but detractors pointed out that the dugong's range reaches only as far north as Okinawa (formerly the Kingdom of Ryūkyū), and so was not likely to have been seen during premodern times in various locations in Japan where mermaid legend (priestess who ate the mermaid) is known to occur. However, this argument is flawed, since there were other sea mammals of the Sirenia order, namely Steller's sea cows which were native to the Bering Sea, and could have plausibly wandered into northern Japanese seas. Other sea mammals such as seals and dolphins are also candidates to have been mistaken for human-fish.
The ichthyologist also pointed out that "Japanese people only saw real dugongs after the Meiji era, but there are eyewitness testimonies of mermaids in older times".
An inscribed wooden slat (mokkan) containing drawings of ningyo (13th century) suggest the actual animal captured may have been a pinniped, such as a seal (cf. §Ritual offering tablet).
The ichthyologist's hypothesis that the ningyo legend originated from sightings of the red-crested oarfish—which drifts ashore even in the Hokuriku region—is bolstered by the lore or reports that the ningyo has a red cockscomb (§Shokoku rijindan) or light red hair (§Kasshi yawa). This cockscomb also is mentioned in the novel by §Saikaku.
Iconography Despite the ningyo being defined as half-woman, half-fish in some modern dictionaries, the ningyo has been also depicted as having a human female head resting on a fish-like body, as in the well known Japanese woodblock print kawaraban pamphlet example (shown right, q.v. §Kairai).
The ningyo reportedly caught in the 7th century became associated with then Prince Regent Shōtōku, and the creature has been depicted as a gift presented to him in picture scrolls entitled Shōtōku Taishi eden, the oldest surviving copy of this (1069) being the earliest piece of ningyo art in Japan. There are multiple copies of the scrolls in existence. Also, much later in the 19th century. An example is the ningyo represented as a composite of the goddess Kannon and a fish (cf. §Prince Shōtoku and fig.).
The ningyo was human-headed in the 11th century anecdote involving the head of the Taira clan (cf. §Presented to Tadamori),, quoting from the anthology Kokon Chomonjū (1254), pp. 400–401 When the ex-magistrate Taira no Tadamori 平忠盛 (1096–1153) moved his residence to Beppo 別保 in the Ise 伊勢 domain..[he caught] a big fish with a head similar to a man, endowed with hands, thick teeth like a fish, and a prominent mouth, which resembled that of a monkey. The body was like that of a normal fish.. (abridged) The stranded ningyo had "four limbs" like a human or had hands and feet but was scaly and fish-headed. which were reported in Northern Japan in the 12th and 13th centuries and interpreted as omens (cf. §Omens in Michinoku) There has also been unearthed a wooden tablet with an illustration of such an ill-omened ningyo date to this period (c. 1286) (cf. )
But during the Edo period, illustrations of ningyo were varied, and in popular literature for entertainment (such as the kibyōshi genre), both human-headed fish type (armless) and half-human type with arms were illustrated (cf. §Two archetypes). One theory is that the two types derive from Classical Chinese literature, in particular the limbed ("hill-fish") and the limbless ("red ru fish") passed down from the ancient Shan hai jing ("Classic of Mountains and Seas") (cf. § Chinese lingyu and chiru).
Chinese literature However, this explanation is compromised by the fact that the Chinese "hill-fish" is considered four-limbed, and illustrated as such, whereas it was actually the Japanese work Wakan sansai zue (1712) which transformed the image of the Chinese "hill-fish" to that of a two-armed legless one (cf. fig. right), while equating it with the Japanese ningyo. And this illustration has struck commentators as closely resembling the Western mermaid. (cf. § Ningyo in Wakan sansai zue) The Wakan sansai zue did also give notice and print the facsimile illustration of the merfolk pronounced Teijin in Japanese (Diren or in Chinese) mentioned in the classic Shan hai jing, which were indeed illustrated as two-armed merfolk in Chinese sources.
Also, what the yōkai wood-block print illustrator Toriyama Sekien drew (1781, fig. left) was not a Japanese ningyo but one dwelling in the far reaches of China west of a World tree (kenboku; pinyin: jianmu ). The caption adds that such ningyo was also known as the people of the Di Nation.
Siren-mermaids recorded by Europeans The Japanese Shogunate had acquired a copy of Johannes Jonston's Natural History in Dutch (1660) already by 1663, containing illustrations of the Western siren-mermaid. But it is not clear whether such "Dutch" (Rangaku, Western learning) images got widely disseminated in Japan before 's , which digested this and other works on the topic of mermaid, with reproduced illustrations.
By the late Edo Period (mid to late 19th century), the visual iconography of the ningyo came gradually to match the half-human half-fish of the European mermaid.
Yao Bikuni One of the most famous folk stories involving ningyo (or rather the flesh of the human-fish), purports that a girl who ate it acquired everlasting youth and longevity, and became the nun (ja) also read Happyaku Bikuni, living to the age of 800 years.
Summary In the typical version the girl who ate the ningyo was from Obama, Wakasa Province, and as a nun dwelled in a grass hut on the mountain at temple in the region.: "in the past lived at this temple むかし当寺に住み", quoted by , citation 13 She traveled all over Japan in her life, but then she resolves to end her life in her home country, and sealed herself in a cave where she dwelled or has herself buried alive on the mountain at the temple, and requests a camellia tree be planted at the site as indicator of whether she still remains alive.
In a version passed down at Obama, Wakasa, the sixteen-year-old girl eats the ningyo inadvertently, after her father receives the prepared dish as a guest, so that the family is not implicated in knowingly eating the ningyo or butchering it. The Kūin-ji temple history claims the father to have been a rich man named Takahashi, descended from the founder of the province, and when the daughter turned 16, the dragon king appeared in the guise of a white-bearded man and gave her the flesh as a gift. But there are versions known all over Japan, and the father is often identified as a fisherman. A fisherman reeled in the ningyo but discarded it due to its strangeness, but the young daughter had picked it up and eaten it, according to one telling.
Time period The oldest written sources of the legend date from the 15th century, and one of these sources relate that the appeared in Kyoto in the middle of that century (year 1449) at age 800.
Assuming age 800 in keeping with her commonly used name, her birth can be back dated to around the mid-7th century, during the Asuka Period.
Folklorist 's chronology makes her a survivor from an even older age. He dated Yao Bikuni eating ningyo flesh in the year 480 AD during the Kofun Period (Tumulus Period).Fujisawa (1931, pub. Rokubunkan) (pub. Daitōkaku）, pp. 40–42. apud However, no written source for this could be evinced, according to a recent researcher, and an oral tradition is presumed.
Asuka period
In the 27th year of Empress Suiko (619, man-like fish were supposedly netted twice: on in Ōmi Province during the 4th month, and in Horie, Settsu Province (, an artificial canal no longer extant), according to the Nihon shoki.
They were freshwater creatures, and the description of it being "childlike" suggested its true identity to be the Japanese giant salamander according to Minakata Kumagusu.Minakata 1973 , p. 306. Cited by .
Prince Shōtoku
Crown Prince Shōtoku at age 48 was allegedly presented with a ningyo from Settsu Province, but he abhorred the unlucky gift and ordered it to be discarded immediately. This account occurs in a picture scroll called Shōtoku Taishi eden. There were some 40 copies of this made, of which the copy held by Hōryū-ji temple, dated to 1069 is the oldest known pictorial depiction of the Japanese ningyo.
While Shoki never used the term ningyo explicitly, Prince Shōtoku had been involved in the Gamō River incident and knew to use the term, according to the prince's abridged history or . Shōtoku also knew the ningyo to bring forth disaster according to the Denryaku, and an annotation provides that it was customary for fishermen at the time to release a ningyo if ever caught in the net. When the prince was alarmed by the ill omen of a ningyo appearing in Ōmi Province, he had a statue of the Kannon goddess placed in the vicinity, according to document preserved at temple.