Though often translated as " mermaid ", the term is technically not gender-specific and may include the " mermen ". The literal translation " human-fish " has also been applied. The notion that eating its flesh imparts longevity is attached to the legend of the Yao Bikuni [ ja ] 'eight hundred [year old] Buddhist priestess', [ 5 ] [ 6 ] cf.
During the Edo period, the ningyo was made the subject of burlesque gesaku novels cf. Accordingly, the ningyo is sometimes referred to by the verbatim translation "human-fish" in English-language scholarship, [ 8 ] [ 10 ] thus allowing for the gender ambiguity.
The term ningyo was not explicitly used in the earliest accounts cf. The earliest examples cf. An inscribed wooden slat mokkan containing drawings of ningyo 13th century suggest the actual animal captured may have been a pinniped , such as a seal cf.
Despite the ningyo being defined as half-woman, half-fish in some modern dictionaries, [ 9 ] the ningyo has been also depicted as having a human female head resting on a fish-like body, as in the well known Japanese woodblock print kawaraban pamphlet example shown right, q. Also, much later in the 19th century. An example is the ningyo represented as a composite of the goddess Kannon and a fish cf.
The ningyo was human-headed in the 11th century anecdote involving the head of the Taira clan cf. However, this explanation is compromised by the fact that the Chinese "hill-fish" is considered four-limbed, [ 40 ] and illustrated as such, [ 41 ] [ 42 ] whereas it was actually the Japanese work Wakan sansai zue which transformed the image of the Chinese "hill-fish" to that of a two-armed legless one cf.
