Folk spirituality, ghosts, and tsunami death-mitigation in Iwate, Japan: a local take on the legends of tōno - story 99

Abstract

Anthropological studies of tsunami-related folk spirituality are rare. Yet historically, ghosts have often helped residents in Iwate, Japan to mitigate some unimaginable human losses resulting from each of three calamitous tsunami which have struck its coastline during the last 122 years. Among the many tsunami death-mitigating ghost tales recorded is Yanagita Kunio’s Kyūjū-Kyū-Wa: Ōtsunami (Story 99: The Giant Tsunami), first published in 1910. Once considered meaningful to survivors who lost loved ones and friends, in recent decades, contemporary analysts have questioned the utility of its message. Using traditional ethnographic methods, contemporary Japanese media sources, and new physical evidence discovered since 2001, this study demonstrates that Story 99, which is slowly fading from public memory in the current generation, is still worthy of fulfilling its original mandate to help tsunami survivors left behind to accept and overcome their heart breaking losses from a local point of view that has never been fully articulated.