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Overview
Bimbo, a poor farmer near Hakuzan in Echizen, finds a living infant where a thunderclap has struck beside him. He carries the child home, and he and his wife adopt him as Rai-taro, calling him a gift from Raijin. The boy becomes devoted to his foster parents and prefers water, clouds and the fields to the village entertainments. Rain repeatedly reaches their crops when other fields remain dry, and Bimbo attributes the household’s prosperity to the child.
At eighteen, Rai-taro thanks his foster parents and announces that he must leave. His human form disappears and a tiny white dragon floats above them. As it flies toward the hills and piled clouds it grows to an immense size and finally passes from view. The parents thereafter live comfortably; after their deaths their shared funerary urn is marked by a tomb carved as a white dragon.
The father’s belief that Rai-taro summons rain is distinguished from the directly narrated final transformation. The opening description of a catlike thunder creature with iron claws belongs to stories Bimbo has heard, not to the child’s dragon body. Griffis supplies no independently checked location for the surviving monument, and this English retelling is not treated as proof of an extant tomb or a universal account of Raijin’s family.
Origins & earliest records
Japanese narrative in an English literary collection
Records & interpretation
Complete relevant chapter and editorial preface read.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Japanese Fairy World: Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan
III, The Child of the Thunder, pp.21–29
Family, evolution & connections
Rai-taro’s foster household
The expressly stated adoption and foster upbringing in Griffis’s 1887 English telling.
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- Bimbo / Kanemochi and his unnamed wife (foster parents)
The branch is an adoptive relationship, not biological parentage. Bimbo and Kanemochi are names of one foster father. The wife is unnamed; neither biological parent is explicitly identified. Rai-taro’s human and white-dragon appearances are one narrative individual.
Bimbo / Kanemochi and his unnamed wife
The couple adopts the child found after the thunderclap and raises him as their foster son. Bimbo later renames himself Kanemochi. His description of the child as Raijin’s gift does not explicitly identify a biological father; the boy and departing white dragon are one character.
Primary records and illustrations
William Elliot Griffis, Japanese Fairy World (1887 edition)
English literary collection; preface dated1880. III, The Child of the Thunder, pp.21–29
Complete chapter and preface directly read. The father’s belief that Rai-taro summons rain is distinguished from the directly narrated final transformation. The opening description of a catlike thunder creature with iron claws belongs to stories Bimbo has heard, not to the child’s dragon body. Griffis supplies no independently checked location for the surviving monument, and this English retelling is not treated as proof of an extant tomb or a universal account of Raijin’s family.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Historical English literary retellingGriffis, Japanese Fairy World (1887), III, The Child of the Thunder, pp.21–29Research access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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