Byakko (White Tiger)Byakko, the White Tiger, Guardian of the West

Byakko is the divine beast of the west, Metal, and autumn, spoken of as forming a pair with the Azure Dragon of the east. This edition traces its astronomical origin and the paired structure with Seiryū.

Its origin is in the stars of heaven. The chain of the seven western mansions (Legs, Bond, Stomach, Hairy Head, Net, Turtle Beak, Three Stars) likened to the form of a tiger is Byakko. The Huainanzi's "Treatise on the Patterns of Heaven"^[1] makes the emperor of the west Shaohao and its beast the White Tiger, assigning it to Metal, autumn, and white. The western palace of heaven in the Records of the Grand Historian' "Treatise on the Celestial Offices"^[2] stands in the same system. The form of a fierce white-furred tiger figures the white of the Metal phase, corresponding to the western sky of autumn, which bears the air of ripening and harvest, and of withering severity.

The pairing of Byakko and Seiryū is old. That the early Warring States lacquer garment chest from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng^[3] (c. 433 BCE) draws the azure dragon and the white tiger to left and right alongside the names of the twenty-eight mansions shows that the composition of the Four Symbols, setting east (Seiryū) and west (Byakko) face to face, was already established twenty-four centuries ago.

In Japan, Byakko was received as a marker of directional protection and of wards. In the Four Symbols' banners of the first year of Taihō (701) in the Shoku Nihongi^[4], Byakko was set to the west (right). Though native tales are scarce, within the geomantic reading of land matching the Four Symbols it was made the guard of the west, and in iconography the White Tiger facing the Azure Dragon still remains on the western wall of the Kitora Tomb^[5]. The dragon of the east and the tiger of the west—this symmetry is the very skeleton of the system of the Four Symbols.

This yokai is included in the following collections:

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