What is "namazu"

In Japanese mythology, the Namazu (鯰) or Ōnamazu (大鯰) is a giant catfish who causes earthquakes. He lives in the mud under the islands of Japan, and is guarded by the god Kashima who restrains the catfish with a stone. When Kashima lets his guard fall, Namazu thrashes about, causing violent earthquakes.

Namazu is a free full-text search engine software under GPL licence, originally developed by Satoru Takabayashi. It can work as a scale Web search engine, and also as a desktop search for email or other files. It is written in Perl.

Namazu may refer to:

• Catfish, "namazu" in Japanese
• Namazu (Japanese mythology) or Ōnamazu, a giant catfish in Japanese mythology involving earthquakes
• Namazu (Anarchist magazine), an English language Japanese anarchist magazine published during 1978 - 1980
• Namazu (search engine), a free search engine software