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(:w͍a.ta.t͡sɯ.mi), also pronounced Wadatsumi, is a legendary ''kami'' (神, god; deity; spirit), Japanese dragon and tutelary water deity in Japanese mythology. is believed to be another name for the sea deity Ryūjin (龍神, Dragon God), and also for the , which rule the upper, middle, and lower seas respectively and were created when Izanagi was washing himself after returning from Yomi, "the underworld". ==Name== 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 海神 lit. "sea god", and transcribes it phonetically with man'yōgana as Wata-tsu-mi 綿津見 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". Note that in addition to reading 海神 as ''watatsumi'', ''wata no kami'', or ''unagami'' in native Japanese kun'yomi pronunciation, it is also read ''kaijin'' or ''kaishin'' in Sino-Japanese on'yomi (from Chinese ''haishen'' 海神 "sea god"). The original Watatsumi meaning "tutelary deity of the sea" is semantically extended as a synecdoche or metaphor meaning "the sea; the ocean; the main". The etymology of the sea god Watatsumi is uncertain. Marinus Willern de Visser (1913:137) notes consensus that ''wata'' is an Old Japanese word for "sea; ocean" and ''tsu'' is a possessive particle, but disagreement whether ''mi'' means "snake" or "lord; god". "It is not impossible" he concludes, "that the old Japanese sea-gods were snakes or dragons." Compare the Japanese rain god Kuraokami that was similarly described as a giant snake or a dragon. The comparative linguist Paul K. Benedict proposed (1990:236-7) that Japanese ''wata'' 海 "sea" derives from Proto-Austronesian *''wacal'' "sea; open sea". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Watatsumi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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