![]() By the 1980s, however, they had started appearing in western Japan as well, then in Niigata and Akita Prefectures and other spots along the Japan Sea coast, and eventually spread throughout the country. ![]() They migrate to Japan in the winter.Īs late as the 1970s, the migratory miyama garasu rook had only been observed in Kyūshū. These rooks are distinctive for their light grey beaks with a whitish base. So far watari garasu have only been sighted in Hokkaidō, but the more recent arrival of miyama garasu as well is a particularly intriguing development.Ī miyama garasu. During the winter months miyama garasu (rooks), kokumaru garasu (jackdaws), and watari garasu (northern ravens) migrate to Japan from the continent. However, they are not the only members of their grouping to be found in Japan. Japanese usually refer to both jungle crows and carrion crows simply as karasu. It has a thick beak and vocalizes with a sharp, clear “Kaw!” Smaller than the hashibuto garasu, it has a short, narrow beak and a croaking call.Ī hashibuto garasu jungle crow. Of these, the two that live here all year around are the hashiboso garasu (carrion crow) and the hashibuto garasu (jungle crow).Ī hashiboso garasu, or carrion crow. There are five species in the family Corvidae that can be spotted in Japan: the hashiboso garasu, the hashibuto garasu, the miyama garasu, the kokumaru garasu, and the watari garasu. Yet today, their real-world brethren no longer enjoy the high status of the past.Ī priest prays before a target decorated with karasu. In this way, karasu have lived on across the centuries in Japanese culture. During this festival, supplicants pray to an archery target that bears the image of a karasu, asking for safety and health for them and their families. ![]() Many Shintō shrines across Japan hold an obisha matsuri around the New Year of the traditional lunar calendar. In much more recent times, this three-legged bird has won new fame as the emblem of the Japan Football Association.Ī banner bearing a yatagarasu image at Kumano Nachi Daisha, one of the Kumano Sanzan shrines.Īscroll depicts the three-legged yatagarasu inside the Kumano Nachi Daisha shrine. In ancient Chinese legends, a three-legged yatagarasu was said to live in the sun as a bird of good fortune and tidings. It is recorded in the Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan), Japan’s oldest historical text, that Yatagarasu guided Japan’s legendary first emperor Jinmu. In Japan as well, there is the famous yatagarasu, the raven deified at the three Kumano Sanzan shrines along the Kumano Kodō pilgrimage route in Wakayama. Take the ravens Muninn and Huginn, the symbols of thought and reason, who in Norse mythology were said to have served the great god Odin. Since ancient times, corvids have been depicted in every corner of the world as messengers of the gods or purveyors of knowledge. Mostly they are stories of friction between karasu and humans in our daily lives-articles painting karasu as pests that foul neighborhoods with raw trash pried from garbage bags, or reports about the earsplitting racket (not to mention piles of droppings) when of karasu gather together.Īround the world, though, tradition presents another image of karasu entirely. Yet the birds that appear most frequently in the news are the karasu, and the tone is very different from how the media cover other birds. Yes, other wild birds like the toki (crested ibis) or the kōnotori (white stork) show up in the news as well, most often in stories talking about their endangered or nearly extinct status. Karasu make frequent appearances in the media in Japan. There is actually no species of bird called the karasu, commonly translated as “crow.” Karasu in Japanese is actually a collective word applied to five closely related yet different species classified under the genus Corvus, belonging to the Corvidae family in the order Passeriformes. Before we begin, we have to make one thing clear.
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