Daidarabocchi Ibaraki Legend

The Daidarabocchi legend in Ibaraki belongs to a wider Kanto cycle in which a giant - called Daidarabocchi, Otaro-bo or Otaro-bo - reshapes the land by walking. In the Ibaraki version, the giant carries Mount Fuji and Mount Tsukuba and, tired, sits down around Lake Kasumigaura; his footprints become the lakes and ponds of the southern Kanto plain. He scoops earth into mountains and presses footprints into lowlands. Yanagita Kunio's Daidara-bo no Ashiato (1927, Kyodo Kenkyu) provided the first systematic study, surveying place-name origin tales across eastern Japan; comparable giant traditions include Tenaga-Ashinaga in Akita and the Shikoku oni cycles. The Hitachi no Kuni Fudoki (713 CE) and the Harima no Kuni Fudoki preserve the oldest layer of giant-footprint traditions. Place names containing 'daidara' are found across Kanto, including Daita in Setagaya, Tokyo, and Isogo-ku in Yokohama. The folklore volume of the Ibaraki prefectural history and municipal histories collect the local variants.