Hitachi Daidarabocchi Legend

The Hitachi Daidarabocchi legend is a topographic-origin cycle in which a giant - called Daidarabocchi, Otaro-bo or Otaro-bo - walks across the Kanto plain and shapes mountains and lakes. In Hitachi Province (Ibaraki), the giant rests on his way to and from carrying Mount Fuji, and the depressions in which he sits become Kasumigaura and Lake Tega; his footprints remain as low ground around Tsukuba and Tsuchiura. Episodes include a comparison of weights between Mount Tsukuba and Mount Fuji and a depression said to be where the giant sat down ('daidarabocchi-kubo'), accounting for the landforms of Kanto as the giant's work. The structure has three parts: reshaping of the land by the giant (carrying mountains and forming depressions); a weights comparison between Mount Tsukuba and Mount Fuji and the giant's impression; and the persistence of the giant in place-names and topography after his passage. The view that the 'giant' in the Hitachi no Kuni Fudoki (713 CE) is the origin of the figure has been widely advanced, and the cycle has functioned as a systematic origin tradition for the topography of the Kanto plain. The setting includes the slopes of Mount Tsukuba and the lake-and-marsh district around Kasumigaura and Lake Ushiku in Tsukuba and Tsuchiura; place names such as 'Oashi' and 'Sasagi' in Tsukuba are derived from the giant. Related traditions are recorded for Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama and across the Kanto, and the place name Daita in Setagaya, Tokyo, is held to belong to the same lineage. The Tsukubasan Jinja and Ibaraki Prefectural Museum of History preserve relevant material. Sources include the 'giant' and 'Okushi-no-Oka' entries in the Naka-gun and Ibaraki-gun sections of the Hitachi no Kuni Fudoki (713 CE) and Yanagita Kunio's Daidara-bo no Ashiato (Kyodo Kenkyu, 1927). Local materials in Ibaraki and Tsukuba and regional historical studies provide further documentation.