Now then, let me tell you something.
You'll know the dragon carvings on the karamon gate at Ueno's Toshogu Shrine — one on either side. The dragon on the right faces upward; the one on the left faces down. Anyone who's come to pay their respects will have seen them at least once.
The thing is — they say these are no mere ornaments.
It's been said for a long time. Those dragons move at night.
Night after night, they slip through the karamon gate and descend to Shinobazu Pond to drink. And so the one with its head pointing downward is called the "ascending dragon," while the one facing up is the "descending dragon" — there's a saying woven into it, something about how the truly great bow their heads. That's the official explanation, at any rate.
Today, I'll tell you the other one.
I heard this from a storyteller, so I can't vouch for every detail.
Back in the Edo period, there was a master carver. His name — well, it hasn't come down to us clearly. One autumn, in the hours before dawn, this craftsman was walking along the edge of Shinobazu Pond.
Whether he'd been carving through the night and stepped out for air, or whether he had some other errand — that part no one knows.
As he drew near the water, he heard something plunge in from the far bank.
Not a splash — a plunge. The sound of something heavy dropping in.
The far shore was still dark. He couldn't see a thing. But the craftsman stopped walking.
Then the surface of the pond stirred.
Not ripples. From the very center of the pond, the water began to rise in a slow, widening circle, swelling upward from below.
He couldn't move, they say.
The water broke open.
Something white and long rose slowly through the surface. At first he thought it was a pillar. But it was a neck. It had scales. In the thin grey light before dawn, dripping with water, it turned its face toward the sky.
It was a dragon, he said afterward.
Some believed him. Some didn't.
But there was one strange thing —
That morning, on the bank of Shinobazu Pond, a pair of women's sandals had been left behind, neatly placed together. Yet no one came forward to claim them. No one came searching for a missing daughter. Nothing surfaced in the pond.
After that, the craftsman spent a long time carving those dragons on the karamon gate. Each scale, one by one, holding his breath as he worked — or so the story goes.
People who've visited Shinobazu Pond at night will tell you: the water stirs even when there is no wind. Not ripples, not a breeze — a movement that seems to push up from somewhere beneath. They say it's unmistakably there.
There is one thing that stays with me.
Those dragons on the karamon gate — look closely, and the downward-facing head has its eyes turned toward the pond. The carved eyes are aimed, quite deliberately, in the direction of Shinobazu Pond.
Whether the craftsman carved them that way, or whether the dragon turned them itself — that much no one has ever thought to verify.
