S P O T ／ SPOT-328

Daidarabo's Carried Stone

ダイダラ坊の背負い石だいだらぼうのしょいいし

Half-buried on a wooded slope at the foot of Mount Takamine, off a quiet forest road in Sakuragawa, sits a great boulder several meters across, and beside it a stone marker telling how it got there. The story belongs to Daidarabo, or Daidarabocchi, the colossal giant of Japanese folklore credited across the country with scooping out lakes, raising mountains, and leaving footprints that became ponds. Here the tale takes a tender turn: when disaster and plague struck the village of Hirasawa one after another, the giant set out to help, hoisting onto his back a massive stone in which a god was said to dwell, meaning to bring it to the suffering people. But partway up the mountain the rope binding the stone snapped, and the boulder crashed down. Even Daidarabo's monstrous strength could not lift it again; he kicked at it in vain, and at last left it where it had fallen and departed in defeat. The 'snapped rope' motif recurs in giant legends all over Japan, but the gentle, would-be-rescuer framing of the Hirasawa stone gives this unassuming rock in the woods its particular pathos.