This year’s Chinese zodiac sign is the snake. It’s a creature that many people tend to avoid—after all, there’s even a phrase in Japanese that likens intense dislike to ‘hating something like snakes and scorpions.’ Whether or not the snakes themselves would take offence is anyone’s guess, but in defence of their honour, I feel compelled to speak up on their behalf.
The polar opposites of snake symbolism
A local potter in my neighbourhood makes zodiac figurines each year, but apparently the ones for the Year of the Snake never sell well. This year’s creations were especially charming, so I ended up buying three, but many still turned away, saying, “No matter how cute, it’s still a snake.”
At the same time, there are plenty of devoted snake enthusiasts out there. This sharp contrast in attitude perfectly reflects Japan’s complex and contradictory views on snakes. Let’s explore some of the traditional tales passed down across the country.
Snakes as guardian spirits
White snakes are widely revered in Japan as auspicious and sacred creatures. Shrines dedicated to white snakes can be found throughout the country. But it’s not only white snakes—there are numerous stories of snakes protecting humans.
・A person rescues a snake, and the snake later returns the favour, bringing great wealth to the household.
・A virtuous monk or person is reincarnated as a snake and becomes a local guardian deity.
・When a snake chooses to dwell in a house, that house flourishes.
・Villages and households that treat snakes with care are said to be protected and blessed with long-lasting prosperity.
Because snakes shed their skin repeatedly, they are also seen as symbols of rebirth and renewal. Moreover, as natural predators of crop-damaging mice, they were cherished as divine guardians of granaries, affectionately referred to as fukumushi (福虫, lucky insects). In religious contexts, snakes have been worshipped as messengers of deities such as Benzaiten (弁財天), or even as incarnations of Benzaiten, Kannon (観音), or Fudo Myoo (不動明王). Judging by this alone, the snake’s image is overwhelmingly positive.
Snakes as vengeful spirits
But on the flip side, snakes can also be vengeful. The phrase “as persistent as a snake” says it all—they are said to pursue those who harm them with dogged determination. Of course, one might argue that you shouldn’t go around hurting snakes in the first place. Still, are numerous tales of people who threw horse dung or straw sandals at snakes, only to be chased down relentlessly.
Worse still, killing or injuring a snake often result in dire consequences—not just for the individual involved, but for their family as well (typically wives or daughters). In extreme cases, entire households are said to have been wiped out.
It’s also intriguing that, in such stories, creatures like frogs and crabs—who were once saved by humans—often return the favour by coming to the person’s rescue when a snake turns malevolent.
There’s a Japanese proverb: “Like a frog frozen under a snake’s glare.” But in these tales, frogs are anything but paralysed—they stand their ground and often defeat the snake. The fact that there are multiple stories of frogs and crabs overcoming snakes suggests some deeper cultural symbolism. But that’s a story for another time.
Ultimately, it’s humans who are the most terrifying. In some regions, people would intentionally anger the snake deity of water to provoke a curse, all in the hope of bringing rain. The phrase “fearing neither God nor man” comes to mind—it’s a stunning example of manipulating divine wrath for personal gain, and it left me once again deeply unsettled by the capacity of human behaviour.
Rainmaking rituals aside, there are also stories so selfish they’re infuriating. In some versions, people promise to marry off their daughter to a snake in exchange for sparing a frog (whom the snake was about to eat), only to go back on their word and kill the snake in the end. These tales are often truly absurd. While the revenge in such stories is sometimes exacted, sometimes not, one thing is certain: I sincerely hope that in the afterlife, justice is served properly.
Tales of ｍarriage between snakes and humans
Within the body of folklore surrounding snakes, there exists an entire genre known as hebi mukoiri (蛇婿入り, Male snake marrying into the family). The fact that such stories are numerous enough to form a distinct genre points to both their popularity and the presence of shared narrative patterns.
A typical storyline unfolds as follows:
A mysterious man—often remarkably handsome—visits a young woman each night. Her family, becoming suspicious, advises her to pierce the hem of his kimono with a needle threaded with a long string. When morning comes and the man disappears, they follow the string—only to discover that it leads to the dwelling place of a snake.
In some versions, this dwelling is revealed to be the sacred precinct of a Shinto shrine. In such cases, the mysterious visitor is understood to have been a snake deity. Perhaps the most well-known example of this is the legend of Mount Miwa (三輪山) in Nara. Recorded in Japan’s oldest chronicles, the Kojiki (古事記) and Nihon Shoki (日本書紀) (collectively known as the Kiki (記紀)), the story tells of a woman named Ikutama Yori-hime (活玉依毘売), who bears a child with the snake deity of Mount Miwa. Their descendants are said to be the Miwa clan, a lineage that continues to this day.
There is also a tale known as the ‘Snake Wife,’ in which the female snake’s true identity is discovered by her husband. Upon being found out, she leaves him, though in many versions she leaves behind one of her eyes as a pacifier for their infant child. Snake eyes were believed to possess mysterious powers, and in some tales, they are stolen by those in positions of power.
Returning to the hebi-mukoiri stories, while some conclude with a happy ending, many do not. In fact, these tales are closely linked to a custom that continues to this day.
The deeper significance of the Iris Bath on the 5th of May
On the 5th of May, during the Tango no Sekku (端午の節句, Boys’ Festival), it is customary to eat kashiwa-mochi (かしわ餅, oak leaf rice cakes) and chimaki (ちまき, sweet rice dumplings wrapped in leaves), and to bathe in iris-scented water, known as shobuyu (菖蒲湯). During the Edo period, this festival was especially important in samurai households, as the word shobu (iris) is a homonym for shobu (尚武) meaning valour or military prowess. However, the bath also holds a more ancient and deeply rooted significance.
In folklore, snakes are said to fear not only iron and steel objects such as needles and swords, but also certain plants—particularly iris and mugwort. If a young woman was believed to have been taken as a snake’s bride, she would be bathed in water infused with these herbs, or given iris wine to drink. It was said that this would drive the snake child from her womb.
This, then, is the original purpose of the iris bath at the Boys’ Festival: a ritual to ward off evil. A spell of protection to keep snakes at bay. And in this act, one can glimpse—indeed, clearly see—the raw emotions of fear and revulsion.
Though the story may begin the same way, one version ends with a revered ancestor of a powerful clan, while another leads to an annual rite for expelling that very being. Here again, we see the dual nature of the snake—revered on one hand, rejected on the other.
Tales in which humans become snakes
While marriage between a snake and a human falls under the category of inter-species marriage—that is, a union between a human and a non-human being—there are also stories in which a human transforms into a snake.
Perhaps the most famous of these is the legend of Anchin Kiyohime (安珍清姫), in which a woman’s grief and rage at betrayal transform her into a giant serpent, consumed by vengeance.
There are also other stories: of virtuous monks or kind-hearted individuals who, after death, are reborn as snake spirits to protect the land; of those whose attachments to this world, or to money in particular, cause them to be reincarnated as snakes. And while not a literal transformation, cases of hebi-tsuki (ヘビ憑き, snake posession) —akin to the more well-known kitsune-tsuki (狐憑き, fox possession) —were also reported in the past.
Snakes, identified as other supernatural creatures
Though the snake mingles with humans, interacts with them, and even transforms into one, it is also a creature that has long been associated—identified, even—with many other beings beyond mankind.
Are dragons, rainbows, and thunder all snakes?
The snake is said to have a particularly close affinity with dragons. According to tradition, a snake can become a dragon through dedicated ascetic training in mountains, rivers, seas, marshes, or rice fields. Some legends go further and claim that the snake is itself a dragon. In ancient Chinese thought, the creature referred to as ja (蛇)—a mythical animal resembling a dragon without limbs—represents a giant snake, as is evident in the character and its readings.
Snakes have also long been connected with natural phenomena. Numerous folk beliefs equate the rainbow with a snake. The rainbow is said to be a celestial serpent, descending from the heavens to drink water, or marking the path it takes between the sky and the earth. Some even suggest that the very word niji (にじ, rainbow) in Japanese is etymologically linked to a word for snake. Beliefs linking rainbows and snakes are not unique to Japan—they appear in traditional lore from China, India, ancient Persia, the Americas, and various African cultures as well.
Snakes are also said to be closely tied to thunder. In various traditions, the snake is not only a deity of mountains, water, and villages, but is also revered as a thunder god.
Symbolic equivalence of Japanese swords and snakes
The Japanese sword, too, is thought to share a close connection with the snake. In the Kiki, the famous Yamata no Orochi (ヤマタノオロチ) myth from Izumo (出雲) tells of a multi-headed serpent slain by a deity, from whose tail a sacred sword emerges. Many folktales feature scenes where snakes and swords are intertwined, leading scholars to conclude that the two were once seen as symbolically equivalent. Dragons and thunder are also said to be spiritually linked with the Japanese sword—perhaps yet another expression of the sword’s snake-like nature.
The human realm, and ‘other’ realm which snakes inhabit
The snake—so protean, so wildly variable in its evaluation—is a creature of contradictions. Why, one wonders, does its symbolic range swing so widely?
Many scholars have attempted to explore this question. A few examples are introduced here.
“The reason the snake is believed to embody both good and evil, and to possess magical power, may lie in its ambiguous nature: it has no legs, yet is covered in scales, thus blurring the boundary between land animals and fish. Its habitat is equally inconsistent—it appears not only on land, but also underground, in trees, by water, and even in human dwellings. It is, in short, an anomalous creature that disrupts spatial categorisations.”
— Itabashi Sakumi (板橋作美), entry on ‘Snake’, Japan Knowledge Encyclopaedia
In The Cult of the Snake and Its Sources, Kojima Yorei (小島瓔禮) draws from a critical essay by the writer Abe Kobo (安部公房), who remarked that “it is difficult to imagine a snake from within the perspective of daily life.” Kojima adds that “among animals commonly seen, the snake has a most unexpected form,” and posits that the snake may once have symbolised chaos itself. From this perspective, if the human world is cosmos—a realm of order—then the snake exists on its opposite side, in the domain of disorder.
Others suggest that in ancient times, snakes were humanity’s most fearsome natural enemies, and that this primal fear has lingered in the depths of the human psyche ever since. Which of these theories is most accurate is difficult to say. As a layperson, I cannot begin to judge. Still, each one holds a certain logic, though none quite settles comfortably in the heart—perhaps because, personally, I find something charming about the expressions and gaze of a snake.
Kojima further speculates that the deity Okuninushi-no-Mikoto (大国主命), who relinquishes rule over the visible world in the Kiki’s myth of the transfer of the land, instead choosing to govern the hidden realm of the sacred, may in fact have been a snake.
Yoshino Hiroko (吉野裕子), one of the scholars cited in this article, was known for drawing bold connections between the snake and numerous aspects of Japanese culture. Her interpretations were often polarising, but considering the snake’s deep and expansive entanglement with human life in folklore, it may not be so strange—whether or not one agrees with her conclusions—that so many things could be associated with the motif of the snake.
The snake is everywhere—and yet distant. A close, elusive companion. Even today, one finds snake motifs embedded in ancient patterns that have survived since antiquity, or in everyday objects we scarcely think twice about. Even in modern urban life, where live snakes are rarely seen, the snake endures quietly, invisibly among us.
Like yin and yang, like light and shadow—so intertwined that one no longer knows where one ends and the other begins—the snake continues on, as a single, indivisible presence. Dwelling in the shadows, it remains always by our side.
Indeed, if you look closely, you may just find one beside you too.
Header image: From Unai no Tomo (うないのとも), Volume 10, edited by Nishizawa Tekiho (西沢笛畝), published by Yamada Unsodo (山田芸艸堂) (National Diet Library Digital Collection)
This article is translated from https://intojapanwaraku.com/rock/culture-rock/265474/
