Seiryū (Azure Dragon)Seiryū, the Azure Dragon, Guardian of the East

Seiryū is not a dragon standing alone, but a numinous beast that takes on meaning only within the directional system of the Four Symbols. This edition traces its astronomical origin and its reception in Japan.

The origin lies in the heavens. Chinese astronomy distributed the twenty-eight lunar mansions across the four quarters, seven to each, and likened the chain of stars of the seven eastern mansions (Horn, Neck, Root, Room, Heart, Tail, Winnowing Basket) to a single dragon. This is Seiryū. The Huainanzi's "Treatise on the Patterns of Heaven"^[1] makes the emperor of the east Taihao and its beast the Azure Dragon, assigning it to the Wood phase and spring, weaving the five directions, five colors, five seasons, and Five Phases into a single cosmology. The "Treatise on the Celestial Offices" of the Records of the Grand Historian^[2] likewise makes the eastern palace of heaven the Azure Dragon, binding constellation to numinous beast. The azure of Seiryū is the color of the Wood phase, figuring the rising life-force of spring in the east.

Its deep layer is engraved in relics. The lacquer garment chest from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng^[3] (c. 433 BCE), the oldest astronomical relic to bear the names of the twenty-eight mansions, depicts the Azure Dragon and White Tiger as a pair. In the Han period, the patterns of the Four Symbols adorned roof tiles, bronze mirrors, and pictorial stones, becoming emblems that warded off evil and summoned fortune.

In Japan, the Four Symbols were received as a theory of astronomy, tomb-building, and capital planning. The Four Symbols' banners of the first year of Taihō (701) in the Shoku Nihongi^[4] are the certain literary first appearance, and in iconography the Azure Dragon on the eastern wall of the Kitora Tomb^[5] in Asuka survives as one wing of a four-direction-complete mural of the Four Symbols. Thus Seiryū was placed between star and terrain, as the guardian beast that governs the east and brings the spring.

This yokai is included in the following collections:

What is Onmyōdō?｜Abe no Seimei, shikigami, the Four Symbols and protection from evil

What was Onmyōdō? Separate history from legend through Abe no Seimei, shikigami, the Four Symbols, Hōsōshi, Hakutaku and Shōki.

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