Underground Station (Station for Underground Bosses)
1958 - 1963

Sasabeya (Konai Kakariin no Kyusokubeya)
[Underground Station (Station for Underground Bosses)]
21.1 x 30.3 cm Ink Painting

Text at the Bottom
An authority strained the meaning of the above word "sasabeya" and said that it was a variety of shoshabeya (copying room). It also seems to represent a simple (sasayakana) underground office in a small coal pit. A room like this is also called a konai tsumesho but large-scale coal pits in the present have no sasabeyas. They each have a check house called a kurikomiba to also do clerical work at their pit mouth. They each have the station next to the powder magazine underground. The underground bosses do not leave the coalfaces in charge of them and there is no need to place any sasabeyas. They communicate with surface workers on the wire.

Text at the Top
Once there was an unexpected great accident that occurred at a sasabeya for underground bosses to take a rest. More than two hundred sticks of dynamite suddenly exploded at the same time in the sasabeya of the No. 2 slope of Aso San-nai Coal Pit at 8:00 a.m. on January 26, 1918, reducing the room to rubble. The explosion was such a severe disaster that it involved miners who had gathered in the lamp station in front of the room, killing 11 of them including Ukichi Nishida, and injuring more of them.
The cause was that some miners warmed the above gelatin dynamite with some naked lights of safety lanterns after surrounding it with sandbags because it was frozen so hard that the miners could not insert a detonator. Though the dynamite sold in the name of Sakurajirushi or Kobai at that time was especially hard, the above dynamite probably exploded because it was directly heated with the naked lights.
The pit was covered with snow more than 10 centimeters thick, which had been falling since the night before. The explosion instantly turned the freezing pit whitened with snow into a dark tragic scene. Miners do not handle explosives at sasabeyas nowadays.

Conversation between the Miner and the Underground Boss
Miner: Dempyo okure. (Give me tickets.)
Boss: Nampako...? (For how many tubs?)

Lettering on the Poster above the Telephone
anzen daiichi: Safety First
kinncho: Concentration
tenken: Inspection
chui: Attention


Translation Assisted by Mr. Nathan Johndro

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