Onamazu or Namazu is a giant catfish yokai that causes earthquakes in Japan.
Appearance[]
As their name suggests, ōnamazu are gigantic catfish which live in the muck and slime of the waterways around Japan. They also inhabit large caverns deep underground.
Behavior[]
Ōnamazu behave much like their smaller cousins. They dig in the muck, and thrash about when disturbed or excited. Due to their titanic mass, the thrashing of ōnamazu is considerably more violent than ordinary catfish, to the point where they are dangerous to humans. When these monstrous fish get excited, they shake the earth with their violent thrashing, causing devastating earthquakes in the areas near where they live.
Origin[]
Long ago, common belief was that earthquakes were caused by large dragons which lived deep in the earth. During the Edo period, the idea of catfish causing earthquakes gradually began to displace dragons in popular lore as the origin of seismic activity. By the 1855 Great Ansei Earthquake, the ōnamazu had become the popular culprit to blame for earthquakes. This was due mostly to the hundreds of illustrations of thrashing catfish which accompanied newspapers reporting the news of that disaster. They were so popular they spawned an entire genre of woodblock print: namazu-e.
The reason catfish came to represent earthquakes was due to a large number of witnesses observing catfish behaving oddly—thrashing about violently for seemingly no reason—just before the earthquake. Rumor quickly spread that that catfish had some kind of ability to foresee the coming disaster. Since then, the catfish has regularly appeared as a symbol for earthquakes—either as the cause or as a warning sign of the coming disaster. Recent studies have shown that catfish are in fact very electrosensitive and do become significantly more active shortly before an earthquake hits—showing that there is more to this myth than meets the eye.
Legend[]
Namazu is a giant catfish that causes earthquakes. He lives in the mud below the islands of Japan and is protected by the god Kashima who restrains the yokai with a stone. When Kashima doesn't overpower him, Namazu thrashes about, causing violent earthquakes. Namazu loves to cause destruction and chaos. After an earthquake near Edo, in present-day Tokyo, in 1855, Namazu is worshiped as a Daimyojin Yonaoshi (God of rectification of the world). The Namazu-e are a minor genre of Ukiyo e; they are usually unsigned and cover a wide variety of scenes such as a Namazu forcing the rich to give coins to the poor and a Namazu atoning for the earthquake he caused. It is believed by some that the origin of the story is the notion that catfish can sense the small tremors that occur before many earthquakes and are most active at those times. Supposedly, this sudden activity was observed in ancient times and people believed that earthquakes are triggered by a Namazu. There is also a story about a catfish that swam up a waterfall and turned into a dragon.