How Benzaiten Tamed the Dragon of Enoshima

The medieval temple history known as the Enoshima Engi tells how the marshy coast near Kamakura was once ruled by a five headed dragon that flooded the fields and demanded sacrifice from nearby villages, with no one able to stop him. Benzaiten descended from heaven and settled upon a small island that rose newly from the sea before her, Enoshima itself, and the dragon, seeing her arrive, fell in love and asked for her hand in marriage. She refused him outright, judging his violence toward the villagers unacceptable rather than simply beneath her notice as a goddess, and only agreed to become his consort once he vowed, faced with that refusal, to give up his cruelty entirely. He kept the vow by transforming into a hill on the mainland facing her island, a place still called Tatsu no kuchi, dragon's mouth, today, and the flooding he had caused is said to have ended with his transformation. Enoshima's shrine today is dedicated to three sister forms of the goddess rather than a single image, a triad reflected in the island's three separate shrine buildings, each approached along the same pilgrimage path that climbs from the causeway connecting the island to the mainland. The temple and shrine literature at Enoshima still tells the episode as Benzaiten's own story rather than the dragon's, crediting her with a deliberate moral judgment, refusing a suitor on the grounds of how he treated others, rather than with a battle won by force.