Goddess+of+Mercy

The Japanese, like most cultures, are quite religious. One of the Japanese goddesses worshiped is Kannon, the Guanyin, or Goddess of Mercy. Kannon is one of the three deities, and appears in 33 different forms from being Eleven-Headed to being thousand-armed, to end suffering of living beings. What she did was come, in different forms, to help people who were in despair or cried. The name "Kannon" means "watchful listening", which is self-explanatory of what she did. In Japan, they started worshiping rituals in the seventh century. There is a temple in downtown Tokyo called Senso-ji to honor her.

There were many legends about Kannon. According to one legend, a pair of brothers kept attempting to return a statue of the goddess to the Sumida River only to have it returned to them later on the next day. In another legend, the story of the straw millionaire, a man in poverty prays to the goddess to get him out of poverty, which leads to a series of trades and the man's prayer is answered. This myth was actually cited by the developers of //The Legend of Zelda// games as an inspiration.