Watatsumi

Watatsumi (海神^?, 綿津見) [w͍a.ta.t͡sɯ.mi], also pronounced Wadatsumi, is a legendary kami (神, god; deity; spirit), Japanese dragon and tutelary water deity in Japanese mythology. Ōwatatsumi no kami (大綿津見神^?, "great deity of the sea") is believed to be another name for the sea deity Ryūjin (龍神, Dragon God), and also for the Watatsumi Sanjin (綿津見三神^?, "Three Watatsumi gods"), which rule the upper, middle, and lower seas respectively and were created when Izanagi was washing himself after returning from Yomi, "the underworld".

The earliest written sources of Old Japanese transcribe the name of the sea god in a diverse manner. The ca. 712 CE Kojiki (tr. William George Aston 1896) writes it semantically as lit. "sea god", and transcribes it phonetically with man'yōgana as Wata-tsu-mi lit. "cotton port see" in identifying Ōwatsumi kami and the Watatsumi Sanjin. The ca. 720 CE Nihongi (tr. Basil Hall Chamberlain 1919) also writes Watatsumi as 海神 "sea god", along with 海童 "sea child" and 少童命 "small child lords" for the Watatsumi Sanjin. In the modern Japanese writing system, the name Watatsumi is usually written either in katakana as ワタツミ or in kanji phonetically 綿津見 or semantically 海神 "sea god".

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