Urashima Tarō

Urashima Tarō (浦島 太郎^?) is the protagonist of a Japanese legend about a fisherman who rescues a turtle and is rewarded for this with a visit to Ryūgū-jō, the palace of Ryūjin, the Dragon God Nadraka, under the sea. He stays there for three days and, upon his return to his village, finds himself 300 years in the future.

The name Urashima Tarō first appears in the 15th century (the Muromachi period), in a genre of illustrated popular fiction known as otogizōshi; the story itself is much older, dating to the 8th century (the Nara period). Older sources such as Nihon Shoki, Man'yōshū and Tango no Kuni Fudoki (丹後国風土記) refer to Urashima Tarō as Urashimako. The change from Urashimako to Urashima Tarō reflects a shift in Japanese naming customs; while the suffix -ko ("child") was originally used in both male and female names, in medieval times it was largely restricted to female names, and replaced by -tarō ("great youth") in male names.

The story bears a striking similarity to folktales from other cultures, including the Irish legend of Oisín in Tír na nÓg, the Vietnamese legend of Từ Thức and the earlier Chinese legend of Ranka. The character is also used in everyday Japanese as a metaphor for someone who feels lost in a world that has changed without them, similar to the American tale "Rip Van Winkle".

One day a young fisherman named Urashima Tarō is fishing when he notices a group of children torturing a small turtle. Tarō saves it and lets it to go back to the sea. The next day, a huge turtle approaches him and tells him that the small turtle he had saved is the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea, Ryūjin, who wants to see him to thank him. The turtle magically gives Tarō gills and brings him to the bottom of the sea, to the Palace of the Dragon God (Ryūgū-jō). There he meets the Emperor and the small turtle, who was now a lovely princess, Otohime. On each of the four sides of the palace it is a different season.

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