Kashima Kanameishi Legend

The Kashima Kanameishi (anchor stone) tradition is an earthquake-pacification tradition centered on the kanameishi enshrined in the grounds of Kashima Jingu in Hitachi (Kashima, Ibaraki). The kanameishi shows only the top of a great stone that reaches deep underground; beneath it the stone is said to pin down a giant catfish (onamazu). The principal deity of Kashima Jingu, Takemikazuchi-no-Kami, is the warrior god who in the upper Kojiki "Pacification of Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni" pressed the demand for the transfer of the country on Okuninushi-no-Kami; by his might he is said to hold the head of the catfish and quiet the earthquakes. In Edo earthquake belief, the popular saying held that during the month of October (kannazuki, the gods' absence) the catfish moves and the earthquakes come; after the Ansei Edo earthquake of 1855, a flood of catfish prints (namazu-e) on the theme of the catfish and the kanameishi expanded the popular cult. The tradition has three stages: the warrior nature of Takemikazuchi and the kuni-yuzuri myth (the origin of Kashima Jingu's principal deity), the paired structure of the anchor stone holding down the catfish, and the Edo-period earthquake cult that grew through namazu-e. A natural disaster is read through the myth of a heroic deity opposed to a giant catfish, and an analogous pair tradition holds at Katori Jingu (Katori, Chiba), whose principal deity Futsunushi-no-Kami also pacifies the earth. The Kojiki, upper Ashihara pacification segment (712 CE), the Nihon Shoki, divine age book two ninth section (720 CE), and the Hitachi no Kuni Fudoki (713 CE, surviving fragments), with Kashima Jingu tradition and Kashima-gu Shareiden-ki, are the textual core; namazu-e prints related to the Ansei earthquake of 1855 are held by the University of Tokyo Earthquake Research Institute Library and the National Diet Library.