4 Japanese Animal Words to Know
Animals worth remembering.
There are plenty of words to learn when preparing to travel to Japan, and these four are fun to know—especially as an animal lover.
Japanese words are beautiful; they can be sharp and also tender in sound. And you’ll find the same mischievous associations in the word neko as in the English word cat.
So pull out (or purchase) your English-Japanese dictionary. Here are four common Japanese words for animals you already adore:
1. Cat — Neko (猫)
The thought of cats and Japan often brings Haruki Murakami’s novels to mind (i.e. Kafka on the Shore). Cats populate his stories as much as strange underworlds do.
There is also a common Japanese figurine called the Maneki-Neko sold as a good luck charm. I’ll be buying one to accompany the lucky Irish stone on my writing desk.
2. Fox — Kitsune (狐)
Foxes have a long history in Japan, so kitsune is likely the most famous of animal words in Japanese.
In folklore they are sometimes tricksters who seduce young samurai by shapeshifting into women. In other tales they go out of their way to reward people who pay respect to them and curse those who don’t.
This is why if you ever meet a fox in Japan you should honor them with a piece of abura-age (a kind of tofu fox spirits are said to like).
3. Wolf — Ōkami (狼)
By the end of 1905 wolves were hunted to extinction in Japan. In folklore ōkami deliver messages for the spiritual forces known as Kami and are depicted as mountain guardians. They were also known to escort woodland travelers safely home so long as an offering was left behind.
Today the award-winning manga Beastars written and drawn by mangaka Paru Itagaki has blossomed a new surge of enthusiasm for wolves in Japan. The anime will soon be on Neflix USA in early 2020. If you haven’t checked out the awesome OP click the link here! (You won’t regret it!)
4. Dragon — Ryū (竜)
Dragons aren’t real, but using J.R.R. Tolkien’s “secondary belief” (read his On Fairy-Stories) I’ll say a creature popular in eastern and western imagination is real enough.
Ryū are gods of the sea and fly as wingless snakes. Here is a summarized tale from the Kojiki (古事記, “An Account of Ancient Matters”):
Once a man named Hoori dived into the ocean to find a lost fishing hook. Instead of a hook he met Toyotama-hime, one of the human-like daughters of Watatsumi, a ryū.
Hoori marries Toyotama and they return to live on the surface world. When Toyotama becomes pregnant she forbids Hoori from witnessing the birth. On the day he is to become a father Hoori cannot control himself and — like Lot’s wife and Orpheus — dares to look in the hut Toyotama resides.
He witnesses his son emerge not from the womb of a woman, but a dragon. Toyotama needed to shape-shift to give birth and feels betrayed that Hoori broke his promise. After their child is born, she leaves Hoori and their son and returns to the sea.
And that is only one of the dragon stories.
So you see: While a foreign language costumes a familiar animal in its own garb of consonants and vowels, the animal is almost always recognizable under its foreign cloak.
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