The Dotonbori Dragon
Recently, there has been a strange drama playing out on the streets of Dotonbori, Osaka’s street food capital. It involves a dragon, a crab, ramen, a missing appendage and even a lawsuit, and for the past few months I’ve been watching it unfold in real time every time I walk along Dotonbori’s main street.
Osaka is often called “the kitchen of Japan”, and Dotonbori, 14 minutes by subway from central Osaka station, is the heart of Osaka’s culinary world. Clustered around the Dotonbori canal, which was originally built in the 1600s to transport food and goods from the port city of Osaka to the national capital of Kyoto, the Dotonbori district has everything — high-end Japanese restaurants in picturesque cobbled laneways decorated with paper lanterns, seedy bars tucked down tiny backstreets lit with 1980s style neons, and long covered shopping streets selling every kind of cooking implement imaginable — but more than anything else, it is famous for its street food. Running the length of its main street are a profusion of tiny restaurants selling traditional Japanese street food, including takoyaki, okonomiyaki, ramen and kushikatsu. However, it’s not just the (excellent) food that makes Dotonbori’s main street so iconic — it’s the signs.
Above almost all the tiny shops on the Dotonbori main street hang giant, three dimensional signs crowding out into the airspace over the street and advertising the delights found within. Most of these are giant versions of the food the restaurants sell, with giant takoyaki, sushi and okonomiyaki featuring regularly down the length of the street, but giant animals are also common, including crab, cows and octopus. All of them light up, and many of them are mechanized, with Kani Doraku’s giant slow-moving crab being the most famous example.
Among this eclectic collection of giant food and animals, one that’s particularly popular among both locals and tourists alike is the giant dragon which twists its way through the wall above Kinryu Ramen — Gold Dragon Ramen — right in the middle of the main street. Kinryu Ramen opened in the 1980s and has five locations around Dotonbori, each crowned with a different dragon sign, but the restaurant in central Dotonbori is the most popular, crowded at almost any time of day or night, and its dragon, grinning down at the crowds below, is equally beloved.
However, there was a problem. Although this particular dragon had been there, unbothered, since the early 1990s, it turned out that the tip of its tail, emerging from the side of the building, was in airspace which was not in fact owned by Kinryu Ramen. Until 2023, nobody had minded, or noticed — but when a new business bought the space, they wanted to expand to a second story, and discovered that there was a dragon-tail-shaped impediment in the way.
They asked Kinryu Ramen to remove the tail. Kinryu Ramen said that this would damage the integrity of their branding, and refused. The new business took them to court, and won, and in August 2024 the tip of the dragon’s tail was removed.
When I next walked down the street, curious to see the newly modified dragon, I was very amused to discover that apparently the dragon himself had some feelings about this indignity, because he had one big blue tear rolling down his cheek! The tip of his tail, as promised, was also gone. But, to my surprise, the saga of the dragon’s tail didn’t end there.
I returned a week later (I do food tours in the area) and was surprised to see that the nature of the dragon’s tears had changed. Instead of one large tear on his cheek, he now had tears brimming under both eyes, giving him a still sad, but less heart-broken appearance. I wondered if there was a reason for the change, but I didn’t have to wonder for long, because as I continued down the street I saw something new.
What’s that…?
THAT CRAB HAS THE DRAGON’S TAIL.
Indeed, another one of the large 3D signboards, a crab, now had the dragon’s tail between its pincers, looking for all the world like it had been the culprit behind the dragon’s de-tailing. It turns out that there is one company who is responsible for making most of Dotonbori’s characteristic signs, and its recently retired president had made Kinryu’s dragon as one of his first jobs with the company, and the crab — a new addition to the street — as one of his very last. He had put the two owners in contact with a suggestion for what to do with the tail, and both the owners had enthusiastically agreed. So, about a week after the tail was cut off, it reappeared on the streets of Dotonbori, this time high in the air in the grip of a giant crab’s claws. There was a collection box raising funds to support the victims of the Noto Peninsula earthquake below this strange sight, and the dragon’s tears had been changed to tears of joy over the spirit of community and support in the Dotonbori district.
Initially the crab was only supposed to have the tail until October 10th, but it was so popular that in the end it stayed up until some time in November. Alas, the crab gave up his claim on the dragon’s tail after that, and where it has gone to now, nobody knows. The dragon hasn’t forgotten his loss though; he’s returned to his previous sad state with one big tear rolling down his face, so it seems to me that the saga of the tail might not yet be completely over. So I’m keeping my eyes open every time I go to Dotonbori, because who knows where else it might pop up?
You can visit Kinryu Ramen and try their excellent ramen here: 1 Chome-7-26 Dotonbori, Chuo Ward, Osaka, 542-0077, Japan
〒542-0077 大阪府大阪市中央区道頓堀１丁目７−26
Or they also have four other locations nearby, each with their own unique signage!
And you can visit the crab that stole the dragon’s tail here: 1 Chome-6-6 Dotonbori, Chuo Ward, Osaka, 542-0071, Japan
〒542-0071 大阪府大阪市中央区道頓堀１丁目6-６
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