Katase-Enoshima Station: A UFO in the Dragon Palace

Over the departure board

I came by train, so I met the dragon before I saw the palace.

It runs along the concourse for about fifteen metres, some six metres above the floor. It is carved from zelkova wood, and it is the dragon of Enoshima’s own legend, the one with five heads, who brought down mountains and sent floods, then asked a heavenly maiden to marry him, was told to change his ways first, and did.

The carver, Inoue Shin’ichi, cut it in sections from his drawings and put them together on site. His workshop says it carves with the finished place in mind: how a piece will look from below, and from a distance.

From below, at a distance, it looks like something carved for a temple hall. Below it, through the opening to the platforms, hangs the departure board.

Up close, the dragon is all scales, whiskers and teeth, with gold in its eyes and red at its mouth.

Not a temple

When Odakyu, the railway company, rebuilt the station, it kept the Dragon Palace and decided to do it properly: a traditional Japanese building in every sense, made with the techniques of shrine and temple carpentry.

It also reminded the designers that this was not a shrine or a temple, and asked for a station that people of every age could enjoy.

So they hid an octopus in the dragon.

Not only an octopus. According to the railway, there is also a sea bream and a turtle. The designers’ own list adds a UFO.

The octopus, the sea bream and the UFO all turned up in my photographs.

Five heads, spread out

Outside, the dragon’s five heads are spread across the front of the station. Three gold heads rise from the roof of the gate in the middle. The other two sit one in each side wall, above breaking waves of blue and white.

Both side heads look like metal. They are carved in wood and finished in gold. The three on the gate are the metal ones: cast in bronze.

The green of the roofs is not old copper, either. It is titanium, coloured to look like copper gone green with age, and chosen because it is lighter and stands up better to the salt air. Gold dolphins swim across it, seven in all, hammered into shape from sheets of copper.

Under the gate

In the folk tale, Urashima Tarō is a young fisherman who saves a turtle from some children who are tormenting it. To thank him, the turtle carries him on its back to the Dragon Palace under the sea, where a princess entertains him. When he goes home, what felt like a short stay turns out to have lasted so long that everyone he knew is gone. The princess has given him a box and told him never to open it. He opens it, and becomes an old man.

Walk through the gate here and look up. Four sea turtles, carved from Kiso cypress, swim around the ceiling, each in a different pose. Enoshima has another turtle on a ceiling, at the far end of the island.