Shussebora

 


The shussebora is a yokai from Japan. It is a mythical version of the triton conch snail.

The name means promoted conch, because it was believed to transform into a dragon as it aged. Many monster in Japanese mythology, and regular animals too, were believed to transform into different, more powerful monsters when they reached a certain age. The triton conch would start out as a land snail living in mountain meadows, make its way down to the ocean and transform into a conch, then when it became a thousand years old it would transform again into a dragon with a conch shell. Many other animals in Japanese mythology also had complex transformations, such as bats, foxes and other more traditional dragons. So now you know what Pokemon evolutions were inspired by.


The belief that the triton conch started its life high in the mountains was probably inspired by finding fossilized shells high in the mountain rocks, pushed up by tectonic lift. Before plate tectonics or the science behind fossilization was discovered people around the world struggled to explain how sea fossils ended up on land, often at great altitudes. As the conch aged it was believed to migrate through the rocks towards the sea, leaving a trail of caves as it went. This belief came from people finding new caves opened in mountain sides after earthquakes and landslides.


The snail / conch would then live out most of its life in the ocean, as an ordinary sea snail. After a thousand years or more it would transform into a dragon. The legend varies on whether the conch would become its own kind of dragon, retaining its shell, or it would become a regular water dragon, leaving behind all traces of being a snail, or if it became a mizuchi, a type of hostile water dragon with four horns.


There was also the belief in the past that eating conch flesh would greatly extend your life and bring good health, because of its connection to dragons. Although conchs were routinely eaten in Japan, yet people still fell sick and lived normal life spans. So over time the legend changed to people needing to specifically eat the thousand year old dragon form to gain health and long life. As science progressed the whole legend about the triton conch unravelled. Although the belief in old yokai legends didn’t die quickly in more rural areas. There’s a saying in Japan “To blow a conch” which means to brag, which likely came from telling tall tails about the triton conch, while knowledge about its real biology rapidly changed.


It’s interesting how often dragons and snails are associated together in mythology. This is the third dragon snail I’ve covered in this blog. Legends about different dragon snails span across Europe and Asia.


Sources


https://yokai.com/shussebora/


https://matthewmeyer.net/blog/2016/10/18/a-yokai-a-day-shussebora/



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