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Review of Uō to Nihonjin: Chisuishin ga tsunagu Higashi Ajia (Yu theGreat and the Japanese: East Asia Linked by the Sage-King Who
Controlled the Flood Waters), by Wang Min. Tokyo: NHK Shuppan,
2014. [禹王と日本人:「治水神」がつなぐ東アジア／王敏著．東京: NHK出版，2014．1,242円．216ページ.]

In China, children’s primary-school
textbooks often contain pictures of Yu
the Great 大禹 controlling the floodwaters in order to give them confidence
and courage to overcome difficulties.
When they grow older, they may learn
that Yu the Great was one of the ThreeSovereigns and Five Emperors 三皇五帝,and that his son Xia Qi 夏啟 founded
China’s first dynasty, the Xia Dynasty.
But most Chinese definitely do notknow that neighboring Japan has
ninety-one sites dedicated to Yu theGreat. This is one of the secrets thatProf. Wang Min’s book Yu the Greatand the Japanese reveals.
Prof. Wang Min is the first president of the Chinese Writers Associationin Japan, a professor at Hōsei University, and a well-known expert on Japan.
Her interest in Japanese worship of Yu the Great began in 2006 at a conference. At the conference, she happened to sit next to Tsuyuki Jun’ichi, head ofKaisei in Kanagawa Prefecture, who told her that the name “Kaisei” 開成came from the Book of Changes, and that within the town there was a stonestele memorializing the Great Yu’s controlling the flood waters. After theconference, she immediately went to the site to investigate, and ascertainedthat the stele was erected three hundred years ago and that the stele had an
inscription written by a well-known Japanese Confucian of the time. Fromthen on, she and a local research group studied the relevant Chinese andJapanese historical materials and discovered that the culture of Yu the Greatentered Japan at least a thousand years ago. In 2007 Prof. Wang Min, in theJapanese literary magazine Bungei shunjū, called for residents to search theirlocal communities for artifacts associated with Yu the Great, and later ŌwakiYoshio, founder of the research group, traveled all over Japan to investigate

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these artifacts. With cooperation from researchers throughout Japan, the groupverified and cataloged around a hundred shrines and artifacts dedicated to Yu
the Great. Prof. Wang Min’s book, Yu the Great and the Japanese, gathers
together all this research and presents it to the reader.
This book was published at the end of 2014, the fiftieth anniversary ofthe founding of the publisher NHK Shuppan (NHK Publishing). The book—which has an introduction (“The Coming to Japan of the Sage-King Who
Controlled the Flood Waters”), four chapters (“How Did Yu the Great
Become a God of Japan?” “Why Is Yu the Great Painted on Sliding Doors ofthe Imperial Palace in Kyoto?” “Why Does Yu the Great Have a Nine-Tailed
Fox Accompanying Him?” and “How Does Yu the Great Live in thePresent?”), and a conclusion (“Yu the Great as a Common Heritage of EastAsia”)—vividly describes and carefully analyzes the Japanese culture of Yu
the Great. It is the most complete scholarly treatment of research in this areaof the present period.
In the introduction, the author recalls the Japanese belief in sages anddescribes how she happened to meet a descendent of Yu the Great when, inChina, she gave a scholarly report on such belief. She then outlines thestructure of the book. In chapter 1, she briefly lists the important sites relatedto Yu the Great throughout Japan and roughly presents descriptions of Yu theGreat in Japanese historical sources. She emphasizes that the culture of Yu
the Great entered Japan through the Confucian classics, and she investigates
the extent to which Japan preserved Chinese books and the state ofConfucian education in Japan. Japan has many important sites memorializing
Yu the Great. For example, Minami Ashigara, in Kanagawa Prefecture, has ashrine dating to the early eighteenth century that bears the given name of Yu
the Great and is dedicated to “King Xia Yu” 夏禹王. The shrine is calledBunmei Sha 文命社, and the given name of Yu the Great, 文命, is pronounced“Bunmei” in Japanese and “Wenming” in Chinese. Nearby is the Bunmei EastDike Stele 文命東堤碑, commemorating the flood-prevention efforts of TanakaKyūgu 田中丘隅 (1662–1729), an expert in agricultural management during
the Edo period. Also, Katashina, in Tone District, Gunma Prefecture, has anEmperor Yu the Great Stele 大禹皇帝碑, inscribed in the difficult-to-decipher“tadpole script.” Nearby is a King Yu Stele 禹王之碑 with an inscription thatdeciphers the difficult-to-read the inscription in the regular script. The tadpolecharacters came from the Chinese Goulou Stele 岣嶁碑, but the text has beenreorganized by an unknown Japanese hand. Again, Kaizu, Gifu Prefecture,
has a King Yu Stone Lantern 禹王灯籠 commemorating the efforts of Hirata
Yukie 平田靱負 (1704–1755), elder leader of the Satsuma Domain, in controlling flood waters of the Ibi, Nagara, and Kiso rivers by engineering separate
channels for them to flow into the sea. This well-known episode in JapaneseBook Review

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history is called the Hōreki Water Control Project 宝暦治水 (Hōreki = 1751–1764). Such sites memorializing Yu the Great are mostly found in areas ofJapan that experienced frequent flooding.
Chapter 2, to describe the sage-king ideal held up for Japanese emperors,
focuses on the painting Yu the Great Swears off Drinking and Guards against
Even the Slightest Malfeasance 大禹戒酒防微圖 on sliding doors in the imperial palace in Kyoto. The imperial palace in the center of Kyoto was used as
the emperor’s primary residence from 1331 to 1868. It is significant that apainting of Yu the Great appears on the sliding doors of the emperor’s residential halls. The story of Yu the Great swearing off drinking and guarding
against even the slightest malfeasance comes from “Strategies of Wei” 魏策 inStrategies of the Warring States 戰國策: “In the past, a princess of the blood
had Yidi make sweet-tasting fermented wine and present it to Yu. Yu drank itand found it much to his liking. He then repelled Yidi, stopped drinking thesavory wine, and said, ‘Later generations will no doubt have a ruler wholoses his kingdom on account of such wine.’ ” This painting was done by
Tsurusawa Tanshin 鶴澤探真 (1834–1893), one of the best painters of theKanō School 狩野派, the largest school of painters in the Japanese tradition.
Yu the Great was a paragon of leadership for Japanese emperors. Indeed, thepresent Japanese reign name, Heisei 平成, comes from 地平天成 in “Counselsof Yu the Great” 大禹謨, Book of Documents 尚書. In the phrase 地平天成, 平
refers to wise management of water and land, and 成 refers to abundant
produce. Hence, the whole phrase means that if water and land are wisely
managed, Heaven will provide abundantly. A mere four characters vividly
expresses the ideal way for a king to govern a country. It is worth
mentioning that the publisher, while preparing the book for the press, gained
permission from the Imperial Household Agency to use the huge painting Yu
the Great Swears off Drinking and Guards against Even the Slightest
Malfeasance for the cover of the book.
Chapter 3 focuses on King Yu’s love story. In the Chinese myth, his wife,
Tushan-shi 涂山氏, is depicted as a nine-tail fox. Does the Japanese culture ofYu the Great include a nine-tailed fox? Interestingly, the author discoveredthat the “Counsels of Yu the Great” steles in Hiroshima and Takamatsu,
Kagawa Prefecture, were both erected in areas of Japan with a nine-tailed-fox
legend. The “Counsels of Yu the Great” stele in Hiroshima was erected in1972 to commemorate the changing of the course of the Ōta River inHiroshima. In the rapids of the Ōta River is a large rock called “Fox Rock.”
According to a local folklorist, in the legend of the Ōta River Fox Rock, asin the German legend of the Rhine River Lorelei Rock, a siren (a fox-womanin the Japanese legend) seduces boatmen to their deaths. The “Counsels of Yuthe Great” stele in Takamatsu was erected in 1673 to honor the water

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management expert Nishijima Hachibee 西嶋八兵衛 (1596–1680). The castle
town Takamatsu, formerly known as Tamamo-jō 玉藻城, was where thelegend of the fox spirit Tamamo no Mae 玉藻前 arose. Tamamo no Mae was
the favorite courtesan of Emperor Toba 鳥羽 (r. 1107–1123). Eventually she
was exposed as a nine-tailed fox spirit by the diviner Abe no Seimei 安倍晴明 and fled. This confluence of the location of the two “Counsels of Yu theGreat” steles and the place of origin of legends of a nine-tailed fox led totheir being imperceptibly conflated. Citing chapter and verse, the author of thepresent work thus tirelessly presents her theses, much to the interest of herreaders.
Chapter 4 explores how Yu the Great culture exists in modern society.
For instance, the Yu step 禹步, which has its origin in the movements of Yu
the Great in tamping dikes to control the waters, is a typical posture in thetraditional Japanese sport of sumo. In China, Daoists, in conjuring, follow theYu step, a hobble hither and a hobble thither, to trace the seven stars of theBig Dipper. Again, legend has it that when Yu the Great cut a channel
through Longmen Mountains for the Yellow River to pass through, “carpjumped and swam over the Longmens” 鯉魚跳龍門. Well, in Japan, on May 5,Boy’s Day, all families with sons fly a carp streamer. Because carp are daring
enough to jump and swim over the Longmens, the hope is that sons willgrow up healthy and overcome challenges like the carp. Today in the private
sector in Japan, people are continuously researching and preserving theculture of Yu the Great from China. From 2010 to 2014 Japan has held KingYu Culture Festivals four times, in 2013 the national, private Association for
Research on King Yu, the Sage Who Controlled the Flood Waters 治水神・禹
王研究会 was established, and it was decided that the King Yu Culture禹王文化まつり would be held in rotation in cities commemoratingFestival 禹王文化
Yu the Great. In the concluding chapter, the author points out that Yu theGreat, originally a symbol of the East Asian intellectual community, has
become an important bridge connecting the present-day cultures of East Asia,and she looks forward to a bright future for research on the culture of Yu theGreat in East Asia.
From the 1980s on, regional study of Yu the Great culture has begun in
Sichuan, Henan, Shandong, and Zhejiang. But “Yu the Great culture studies”
has yet to become a branch of learning, and only local scholars participate in
the available research groups, with the result that it is impossible togeographically divide up questions concerning the place of birth, area ofwater control, and scope of activities of Yu the Great. Prof. Wang Min’s bookgives us a completely new perspective on how to research Yu the Great
culture with a heightened sense of the unity of East Asia. Also worthy ofemulation is the rigorous, detailed approach of Japanese scholars to research.

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I hope that Prof. Wang Min’s book Yu the Great and the Japanese will soon
be translated into Chinese and published in China.
Lou Zhenghao 樓正豪
Institute of East China Sea Development 東海發展研究院
Zhejiang Ocean University 浙江海洋大學