Of Earthquakes and Magical Kingdoms Under the Sea

A week or so ago, a bizarre-looking deep-sea fish called Ryugu-no-Tsukai, which Wikipedia tells me is “oarfish” in English, started coming up from the bottom of the sea in large numbers. This was a very strange thing to happen, and there was a lot of discussion about how an earthquake might be about to occur somewhere in the world. Now that the tragic magnitude 8.8 quake in Chile has happened (plus a smaller M6.9 one off the coast of Okinawa), a lot of people here are nodding their heads about the wisdom of the sea. Incidentally, the Japanese name of the fish is quite cool, meaning “Servant of Ryugu,” and it’s mentioned in Urashima Taro, an ancient Japanese tale of a fisherman who rescues a turtle and is rewarded by being taken to the magical undersea Dragon Kingdom, where he’s waited on by beautiful sea-maidens for three days. When he returns home, he finds that 700 years have passed. The story shows up in many poplar anime series, from Dragonball Z to Love Hina and more, and we even have an really awesome dating-sim game built around the premise.

Tthe story of Urashima Taro is one of Japan’s most famous.