The Wife from the Dragon Palace is a Japanese folktale collected by scholar Yanagita Kunio. A man of low social standing marries a maiden who is the daughter of a marine deity. After they return to land, a local man of higher social standing begins to desire the supernatural maiden, and devises ways to have her for himself by setting impossible tasks for the husband.
Scholars locate similar stories in Central and East Asia.
Summary Yanagita collected a variant from Kikaijima, Kagoshima. In this version, a woman lives with her only surviving son. He earns his living by gathering and selling flowers. One day, when he has not earned much, he throws a bunch of them into the sea as an offering to the Dragon God. A tortoise appears to him and leads him to the Dragon God's underwater palace. The tortoise also advises that, if the Dragon God offers him a gift, the boy should ask for his daughter. The boy spends three days in the underwater palace and returns to land with the Dragon King's daughter as his wife. When he goes back home, he learns that three years have passed and that his mother has died. Fortunately for him, his wife takes out a Life Whip and uses it on her mother-in-law to revive her. She also uses a magic mallet to create a larger house for them.
Some time later, a local feudal lord finds out about the flower-seller's beautiful wife and decides to have her for himself. First, he demands the flower-seller bring him 100 koku of rice. The boy returns home and tells his wife about the task. The Dragon God's daughter goes to the seashore and summons hundreds of horses that come out of the sea with the rice. Next, the feudal lord demands 1000 fathoms of rope to be delivered to him. Once again, the Dragon God's daughter produces the requested item after going to the sea shore. Thirdly, he announces he will visit the flower-seller's house with 699 men and demands his guests be fed and given 77 jars of foaming wine. The flower-seller's wife prepares the large banquet with trays of food and wine. Finally, the lord asks the girl to give them some rowdy entertainment. The Dragon God's daughter opens up a box; hundreds of men come out and perform a song and dance for the guests. The lord then asks for some quiet entertainment, and she opens another box: hundreds of men leap out of it with swords and kill the lord and his guests.Ancient Tales in Modern Japan: An Anthology of Japanese Folk Tales. Selected and Translated by Fanny Hagin Mayer. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1984. pp. 34-36. .Yanagita Kunio. The Yanagita Kunio guide to the Japanese folk tale. Translated and edited by Fanny Hagin Mayer. Indiana University Press, 1986. p. 34. .Elswit, Sharon. The East Asian story finder: a guide to 468 tales from China, Japan and Korea, listing subjects and sources. McFarland, 2009. p. 75. .
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 465, "The Man persecuted because of his beautiful wife": a man of poor social standing marries or is given a beautiful wife of supernatural origin; some time later, an emperor, lord or nobleman of superior rank lusts after the wife of supernatural origin and sends the mortal husband on impossible quests.Uther, Hans-Jörg. The types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography, based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Volume 1: Animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, and realistic tales, with an introduction. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia-Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. p. 273. .
Japanese folklorist Seki Keigo indexed in his own system of Japanese folktales a tale type he termed The Wife from the Ryūgū (Dragon Palace). In this type, a poor flower-dealer gives an offering to the king of the Ryugu (Dragon Palace). A messenger from the underwater palace comes and takes the flower-dealer to the king's presence. The king is pleased by the man's offering, gives him a gift and allows him to marry his daughter. Back on land, a local feudal lord imposes difficult tasks on the man, otherwise he must forfeit his wife, the underwater king's daughter.Seki, Keigo. "Types of Japanese Folktales". In: Asian Folklore Studies 25 (1966): 77. .
Motifs According to scholarship, in type 465, the hero saves the child of the underwater king and is invited to go down there. Usually, the hero meets the underwater king (who is a dragon king) and marries his daughter, but in some variants he can marry the daughter of the Chinese emperor. In most of the variants from East, Southeast and Central Asia, the underwater king's daughter appears as a fish or a dragon, less commonly as a bird or a dog."Сказки и предания Вьетнама". Составитель: Юлия Минина. Moskva: Издательский дом Высшей школы экономики, 2021. p. 223 (notes to tale nr. 4). .
Variants According to Sinologist , the tale is very popular among East Asian and Central Asian peoples: a human rescues a son or daughter of the king of dragons or snakes, visits the underwater realm and is rewarded with a box with the dragon king's daughter inside, whom he marries."Дунганские народные сказки и предания" [Dungan Folktales and Legends]. Составители [Compilers]: Махмуд Хасанов, Ильяс Юсупов. Moskva: Главная редакция восточной литературы издательства «Наука», 1977. p. 403.
Literary predecessors The oldest attestation of the tale type is found in ancient East Asian literature of the 7th century, namely Chinese and Japanese.Marzolph, Ulrich; van Leewen, Richard. The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia. Vol. I. California: ABC-Clio. 2004. p. 81. (e-book) Seki Keigo pinned down its appearance in some literary collections of his country, such as in Nihongi, the Ryoi-ki and the .Seki, Keigo. Folktales of Japan. Translated by Robert J. Adams. University of Chicago Press. 1963. p. 170. .
Japan Yanagita located variants from across Japan in the following regions: Iwate; Niigata; Gifu, Yoshiki-gun; Shimane, Ochi-gun; Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Kikaijima; and in Koshikijima.Yanagita Kunio. The Yanagita Kunio guide to the Japanese folk tale. Translated and edited by Fanny Hagin Mayer. Indiana University Press, 1986. p. 34. . Keigo located variants from Ehime, Hiroshima, Iwate, Kagoshima, Kochi, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Shimane.Seki, Keigo. "Types of Japanese Folktales". In: Asian Folklore Studies 25 (1966): 77. . In addition, Riftin argued that tales about a hero gaining an object from a marine deity only appear in coastal Southwestern Japan and near Korea, which would indicate that the story migrated from the continent."Дунганские народные сказки и предания" [Dungan Folktales and Legends]. Составители [Compilers]: Махмуд Хасанов, Ильяс Юсупов. Moskva: Главная редакция восточной литературы издательства «Наука», 1977. p. 404.
East Asia China In the first catalogue of Chinese folktales (devised by Eberhard in 1937), Wolfram Eberhard abstracted a similar opening, indexed as number 39, Der Drachenkönig erfüllt einen Wunsch ("The Dragon King fulfills a wish"):Eberhard, Wolfram. Chinese Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. London: 1937. p. 211. the protagonist rescues the Dragon King's child (his son or his daughter), who appears in the shape of a carp (or in one case, a mussel); in gratitude, the protagonist is taken to the underwater palace and is offered a present; following a servant's advice, the protagonist chooses the gift, and gains either a wife (the Dragon King's daughter) or an object that grants him riches.Eberhard, Wolfram. Typen Chinesischer Volksmärchen. FF Communications 120. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1937. pp. 64-65. He dated some of the Chinese variants to the time of the Sung dynasty, and others to the time of the Tang dynasty.Eberhard, Wolfram. Typen Chinesischer Volksmärchen. FF Communications 120. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1937. p. 68.Eberhard, Wolfram. Chinese Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. London: 1937. p. 211.
Chinese folklorist and scholar established a second typological classification of Chinese folktales (the first was by Wolfram Eberhard in the 1930s). In his new system, he noted that Chinese variants of type 465, "The Man Persecuted Because of his Beautiful Wife", may be preceded with another tale type he dubbed 555*, "The Grateful Dragon Prince (Princess)". In the latter type, the hero rescues an animal (fish, turtle, serpent) or gives offering to a water deity. The animal reveals he is a Dragon Prince and takes the hero to his father's underwater court. Down there, the hero is given a box with a bird inside (a pheasant, a hen) and takes it with him back to land. The animal leaves the box and becomes a woman; the man sees her and she tells him she is a daughter of the Dragon King (a Dragon Princess). They marry and the tale segues into type 465.Nai-tung TING. A Type Index of Chinese Folktales in the Oral Tradition and Major Works of Non-religious Classical Literature. FF Communications, no. 223. Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1978. pp. 80-81, 102. Sinologist Boris Riftin stated that variants appear "mainly" in Eastern China, namely, in Shandong, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Sichuan and Hebei."Дунганские народные сказки и предания" [Dungan Folktales and Legends]. Составители [Compilers]: Махмуд Хасанов, Ильяс Юсупов. Moskva: Главная редакция восточной литературы издательства «Наука», 1977. p. 403.
Regional tales Lowell Edmunds, in his book Stealing Helen, provided a Chinese variant titled Long nüe ("Dragon Girl"): an elder brother tries to get rid of his younger brother by locking him in a trunk and casting him downstream. The youth begins to play on his bamboo flute, which draws the attention of the aquatic Dragon King. The deity sends two dispatches to get the human to his underwater palace, where he spends some time. Before he departs, the dispatches advise the human to ask for the Dragon King's pup as reward, since the little animal is the daughter of a goddess. The youth takes the pup with him to the human world and it becomes a beautiful maiden and they marry. Some time into their marriage, a servant of the emperor sights the maiden and reports back to the emperor. The emperor first tasks the humble flute player with providing an army in three days time. His supernatural wife helps him and creates the army for the emperor. The emperor then sends guards to take the maiden by force, but the humble man tricks the emperor and gains her back."Appendix 1. Examples of “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife”". In: Edmunds, Lowell. Stealing Helen: The Myth of the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. pp. 275-277. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400874224-011