Abstract
This chapter analyses eighteenth-century author, poet, and painter Takebe Ayatari’s two accounts of his experience of the Kanpō Floods of 1742, reportedly the most disastrous flood to hit the metropolis of Edo and its environs over the course of the Edo period. Ayatari’s text, translated here for the first time, reveals a sympathetic and detailed firsthand account of the disaster, as it affected those living in the Kumagaya area of the northern Kanto region, Japan. Through an examination of these two accounts, the essay explores not only the disaster itself but also the changes that occurred in the mind of the author as he transferred the source of his salvation from Buddhist to arguably Shinto forces.
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Notes
- 1.
Obayashi, present-day Obayashi, Kuji City, Saitama Prefecture. The Sōtō Zen monastery, Shōgen-ji, survives today.
- 2.
According to Honda (1973, 86), this refers to the Sōtō Zen monastery, Zenpō-ji, located in present-day Nagazaike, Fukaya City, Saitama Prefecture.
- 3.
I have yet to identify an authoritative source for this, but it seems that Ayatari is referring here to the legendary hero of the Kojiki and other ancient works, Yamato Takeru. See, for example, Tochihara (2005, 187, 276). When Yamato Takeru had subdued the Eastern Barbarians, he is said to have headed west to Kai Province, gazing upon Ryōkami-san (standard name today for Yōkami -san) for eight days until crossing it. Yamato Takeru later becomes Ayatari’s ideal to whom he aspires.
- 4.
A large-scale landslip or avalanche.
- 5.
Quoting from a well-known Kokinshū (KKS, pref. 905) poem on impermanence (KKS 933, anonymous) “Yo no naka wa/nani ka tsune naru/Asukagawa/kinō no fuchi zo/kyō wa se ni naru” (In this world of ours/what is there that does not change/Tomorrow River/the deep pools of yesterday/have become today’s shallows; Rodd and Henkenius, trans. 1984, 318).
- 6.
From the Song Dynasty Zen classic, the Blue Cliff Record (C. Biyan lu, J. Hekiganroku, 1125). “All the dharma teachings ultimately result in a single one” (J. Manpō kiitsu, or Manpō itsu ni ki su).
References
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Marceau, L.E. (2019). One Flood, Two ‘Saviours’: Takebe Ayatari’s Changing Discourse on the Kanpō Floods of 1742. In: Bouterey, S., Marceau, L. (eds) Crisis and Disaster in Japan and New Zealand. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0244-2_2
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