The story of Urashima Taro (浦島太郎) is one of Japan’s oldest and most beloved folk tales. A young fisherman rescues a turtle from a group of cruel children. In gratitude, the turtle carries him to the Ryūgū-jō, the Dragon Palace at the bottom of the sea, where he is welcomed by the beautiful princess Otohime. He spends what seem like a few happy days there. But when he returns home, he finds that hundreds of years have passed. Everyone he knew is long dead. In despair, he opens a box that the princess told him never to open — and in a cloud of white smoke, he becomes an old man.
The tale has been told for more than thirteen centuries, and it is often called the Japanese Rip Van Winkle. But it is older, stranger, and sadder than that comparison suggests.
The Tale
The Turtle
Long ago, in a fishing village by the sea, lived a young fisherman named Urashima Taro. One day, walking along the beach, he saw a group of children tormenting a small turtle, poking it with sticks and turning it on its back. Urashima felt sorry for the turtle. He gave the children some money, took the turtle, and released it into the sea.
The Journey Under the Sea
A few days later, Urashima was fishing in his boat when he heard a voice calling his name. It was the turtle. “Thank you for saving me,” it said. “To repay your kindness, I will take you to the Ryūgū-jō, the Dragon Palace.” Urashima climbed onto the turtle’s back, and it carried him down through the blue water to the bottom of the sea.
The Dragon Palace was more beautiful than anything he had ever seen: built of coral and crystal, with roofs of gold and pearl. In one version, each side of the palace showed a different season: cherry blossoms in spring, cicadas singing in summer, red maple leaves in autumn, and snow in winter.
There he was welcomed by Otohime, the princess of the sea, daughter of the Dragon King Ryūjin. She told him that she had been the turtle he had saved. She thanked him and invited him to stay. Fish danced for him; sea bream and flounder performed; there were feasts and music.
The Longing for Home
Urashima was happy, and the days passed like a dream. But after a while — three days in some versions, three years in others — he began to think of his old parents, and he longed to go home.
Otohime was sad, but she let him go. As a parting gift she gave him a beautiful lacquered box, the tamatebako (玉手箱, “jewelled hand-box”), tied with a silk cord. “Take this,” she said, “but you must never open it.”
The Return
The turtle carried Urashima back to his village. But everything had changed. The houses were different. He recognized no one. When he asked about his family, people looked at him strangely. At last an old man told him that he had heard a story from his grandfather’s time, of a fisherman named Urashima who had gone out to sea long ago and never returned — three hundred years before. His parents were long dead, and his house was gone.
The Box
Grief-stricken and alone, Urashima sat on the beach. Not knowing what else to do, and forgetting the princess’s warning, he untied the cord and opened the box.
A cloud of white smoke rose from it. In an instant, Urashima’s hair turned white, his face became wrinkled, and his back bent. He had become an old man. The box had held his lost years.
In some versions he crumbles to dust. In others he turns into a crane and flies away to join Otohime, who has become a turtle; the crane and the turtle are both Japanese symbols of long life, and the two are sometimes said to be worshipped together as a couple.
The Oldest Versions
The story of Urashima is one of the oldest recorded folk tales in Japan. It appears in several ancient sources:
- The Nihon Shoki (720 CE) records, under the year 478, that a man of Mizunoe in the province of Tango, named Urashimako, caught a turtle while fishing, which turned into a woman. He married her, and they went into the sea together to Hōraisan, the Taoist island of the immortals.
- The Tango no Kuni Fudoki (early eighth century), a regional gazetteer, gives a fuller account: Urashimako meets a beautiful woman from the sea who takes him to a land of immortals. He stays three years and, when he returns home, finds that three hundred years have passed. He opens a box she gave him, and his youthful form flies away “like a fragrant cloud” into the sky.
- The Man’yōshū (c. 759), the oldest collection of Japanese poetry, contains a long poem by Takahashi no Mushimaro about Urashima of Mizunoe, who met the daughter of the sea god and lived with her in a palace for a time; when he opened the box, a white cloud rose, and he became old and died.
In these early versions, the woman is not a princess of the Dragon Palace but an immortal from the Taoist land of eternal life, and Urashima marries her. The Dragon Palace, the rescued turtle, and the cruel children were added in later centuries, especially in the Muromachi period (1336–1573) and after.
The Shrine of Urashima
At Ine, on the Tango Peninsula in northern Kyoto Prefecture, stands the Urashima Shrine (Ura-jinja), which claims to have been founded in 825 CE. It holds what is said to be Urashima’s tamatebako, and honours him as a god. The area around it is associated with the oldest versions of the story.
Meanings
What does the tale mean?
- Time in the Otherworld. The idea that time passes differently in a supernatural realm is found all over the world. In the Irish legend of Oisín, the son of Fionn mac Cumhaill goes to Tír na nÓg, the Land of Youth, with the fairy woman Niamh. After what seems like three years, he returns to Ireland to find three hundred years have passed. When he falls from his horse and touches the ground, he becomes instantly old. The parallel with Urashima is astonishing.
- The forbidden box. Like Pandora’s jar (see Pandora’s Box), the tamatebako contains something that should not be released. But unlike Pandora’s evils, it contains only the truth: the years that have passed. Opening it is not wickedness but a return to reality.
- Mortality. Urashima’s happiness in the Dragon Palace is a dream of eternal youth. His return to the ordinary world means accepting age and death.
- Kindness rewarded — and yet. The story begins as a moral tale about kindness to animals, but it does not end with a simple reward. Urashima’s kindness brings him paradise, but also the loss of everything he knew.
Urashima Today
The story remains hugely popular in Japan. It is the subject of a well-known children’s song, of picture books, films, and anime. The phrase “like Urashima Taro” (Urashima Tarō no yō) is used for someone who returns from a long absence to find the world has changed — a returning expatriate, or a released prisoner. The Japanese word urashima is sometimes used as slang for this experience. In the 1970s, the Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda, who emerged from the Philippine jungle after thirty years, still believing the Second World War was being fought, was often compared to him.
Last reviewed: September 2026.