page_title: Sea in culture
section_title: Symbolism, myth and legend
hierarchical_section_title: Sea in culture / Symbolism, myth and legend
caption_attribution_description: Isonade (磯撫) from the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (絵本百物語)
context_page_description: The role of the sea in culture has been important for centuries, as people experience the sea in contradictory ways: as powerful but serene, beautiful but dangerous. Human responses to the sea can be found in artforms including literature, art, poetry, film, theatre, and classical music. The earliest art representing boats is 40,000 years old. Since then, artists in different countries and cultures have depicted the sea. Symbolically, the sea has been perceived as a hostile environment populated by fantastic creatures: the Leviathan of the Bible, Isonade in Japanese mythology, and the kraken of late Norse mythology. In the works of the psychiatrist Carl Jung, the sea symbolises the personal and the collective unconscious in dream interpretation.
  The sea and ships have been depicted in art ranging from simple drawings on the walls of huts in Lamu to seascapes by Joseph Turner and Dutch Golden Age painting. The Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai created colour prints of the moods of the sea, including The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The sea has appeared in literature since Homer's Odyssey. The sea is a recurring theme in the Haiku poems of the Japanese Edo period poet Matsuo Bashō.
context_section_description: Symbolically, the sea has long been perceived as a hostile and dangerous environment populated by fantastic creatures: the gigantic Leviathan of the Bible, the shark-like Isonade in Japanese mythology, and the ship-swallowing Kraken of late Norse mythology.
  The Greek mythology of the sea includes a complex pantheon of gods and other supernatural creatures. The god of the sea, Poseidon, is accompanied by his wife, Amphitrite, who is one of the fifty Nereids, sea nymphs whose parents were Nereus and Doris. The Tritons, sons of Poseidon, who were variously represented with the tails of fish or seahorses, formed Poseidon's retinue along with the Nereids. The mythic sea was further peopled by dangerous sea monsters such as Scylla. Poseidon himself had something of the shifting character of the sea, presiding not only over the sea, but also earthquakes, storms and horses. Neptune occupied a similar position in Roman mythology. Another Greek sea-god, Proteus, specifically embodies the domain of sea change, the adjectival form "protean" meaning mutable, able to assume many forms. Shakespeare makes use of this in Henry VI, Part 3, where Richard III boasts "I can add colors to the chameleon, Change shapes with Proteus for advantages".
  In Southeast Asia, the importance of the sea gave rise to many myths of epic ocean voyages, princesses on distant islands, monsters and magical fish lurking in the deep. In Northern Europe, kings were sometimes given ship burials when the body was laid in a vessel surrounded by treasure and costly cargo and set adrift on the sea. In North America, various creation stories have a duck or other creature dive to the bottom of the sea and bring up some mud out of which the dry land was formed. Atargatis was a Syrian deity known as the mermaid-goddess and Sedna was the goddess of the sea and marine animals in Inuit mythology.
  In Norse mythology Ægir was the sea god and Rán, his wife, was the sea goddess while Njörðr was the god of sea travel. It was best to propitiate the gods before setting out on a voyage.
  In the works of the psychiatrist Carl Jung, the sea symbolizes the personal and the collective unconscious in dream interpretation:
  [Dream] By the sea shore. The sea breaks into the land, flooding everything. Then the dreamer is sitting on a lonely island.[Interpretation] The sea is the symbol of the Collective unconscious, because unfathomed depths lie concealed beneath its reflecting surface.
  
  [Footnote] The sea is a favourite place for the birth of visions (i.e. invasions by unconscious contents).
caption: The Isonade as depicted in Takehara Shunsen's Ehon Hyaku Monogatari, 1841[11]
exif: {}