S P O T ／ SPOT-279

Tatsuko Statue

たつこ像たつこぞう

On the western shore of Lake Tazawa — at 423.4 meters the deepest lake in Japan — a golden figure stands ankle-deep at the water's edge, gazing out over an expanse of impossibly blue water. This is the Tatsuko statue, cast in bronze by the sculptor Funakoshi Yasutake and erected in 1968. The gold is no mere flourish: Lake Tazawa's water is strongly acidic, and the figure was finished in gold leaf and lacquer to shield the bronze from corrosion — a practical decision that produced one of the most striking color contrasts in the Tohoku landscape, a gleaming golden body against deep cobalt blue. The statue gives form to a local legend. A young woman named Tatsuko, desperate to keep her beauty and youth forever, prayed for a hundred days and nights and was told to drink from a spring to the north; she drank, and drank, until she transformed into a great dragon and sank to the bottom of the lake to become its eternal master. The figure stands on a pedestal that juts slightly into the water, so that statue and lake seem to merge — a princess paused at the threshold between her human form and the depths that took her.