Osaka dragon’s tail must be cut off, high court rules in Osaka ramen restaurant case

Landmark Dotonbori ramen restaurant’s famous dragon is going to be cut down to legally allowable size.

Recently, the Osaka High Court made its ruling regarding a case of a karate expert assaulting a ghost (haunted house worker) with a bone-shattering kick. That’s not the only case involving magical creatures that Osaka’s highest judiciary authority has had to render a verdict on this summer, as it’s also reached a decision regarding a dragon in downtown Osaka.

The Dotonbori district is one of Osaka’s biggest tourist draws, boasting a unique urban landscape of neon lights, bridges over its canal, and lots and lots of restaurants. Because Dotonbori has so many places to eat, restaurants have to do something special to stand out from the pack, and many of them do that with creative, eye-catching three-dimensional signs and decorations.

One of the most famous examples is the Dotonbori branch of Kinryu, a ramen restaurant whose name means “Gold Dragon” and which has, appropriately, a giant dragon greeting guests from above its dining area.

▼ You could argue the statue is more of a green dragon than a gold one, but its draconian status can’t be questioned.

Kinryu’s dragon has made it a local landmark and won it word of mouth even from foreign travelers who can’t read the restaurant’s name or know what it means. But while Kinryu’s choice of decoration is a great fit thematically, it turns out it’s not such a great fit geographically. As you can see in the above image, Kinryu’s dragon has an extra bit of architectural flair in that it appears to be coming out of the wall. Walk around to the other side, and you’ll find the rest of its body and, bursting through yet another wall, the tip of its tail.

That’s also where you’ll find the problem, because the tail juts out far enough from Kinryu’s restaurant that it’s actually crossing over into the adjacent property lot, which Kinryu doesn’t own. The real estate company that owns that lot isn’t happy about this, and four years ago they filed a lawsuit against Kinryu, asking them to remove the tail of the dragon.

Looking at the situation from the angles shown in the above video, the tail doesn’t appear to extend more than halfway across the alley. However, such walkways in Japan are sometimes private property, not public roads (as we discussed when tourists were recently barred from certain roads in Kyoto’s geisha district), so it’s likely that Kinryu’s property stops close to its building exterior, and the walkway technically belongs to the neighboring lot, whose owners allow people to use it.

Regardless of where the exact property line is, back in October an Osaka district court ruled in favor of the real estate company, ordering Kinryu to remove the dragon’s tail. Kinryu then filed an appeal, and the case was passed up to the Osaka High Court, who once again ruled in favor of the plaintiff in May.

Since then, Kinryu had been mulling appealing the decision once again, but as of last week says that it’s finally giving up the fight to save the dragon’s tail, saying that the ongoing legal struggle is making it difficult to focus on making great ramen and serving it to their customers. Not that this was an easy choice for the restaurant to make, though. “It is with a heavy heart that we have resolved to abide by the court’s ruling and cut off the dragon’s tail,” said the restaurant in a statement, adding “That three-dimensional sign is the very symbol of our company, and it is not just a simple tail to us.”

The silver lining to Kinryu’s predicament is that the restaurant itself is doing just fine, and will continue operations with or without the tip of the tail, and that the rest of the dragon is being spared. An exact date for the tail’s severing has yet to be set, but it’s expected to take place sometime before the end of this month.

Source: MBS News, FNN Prime Online
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