Women at Coal Pits (Yama) #3 (Well Sweep)
1958 - 1963

Yama no Onna #3 (Hanetsurube)
[Women at Coal Pits (Yama) #3 (Well Sweep)]
21.0 x 30.0 cm Ink Paining

Senryu (short witty and humorous seventeen-syllabled poem) at the Beginning
"Hanetsurube ippai nomeba sugu agari "

"The well sweep rises quickly after scooping up a bucketful of water"

This painting shows the well in S Coal Pit (situated west of old Kasamatsu-toge Pass) opened in December, 1896 and closed in February, 1910, where there is Aso Farm today. This well was below the pond toward the northwest 500 meters apart from the miners' row houses. It was very hard for the women shouldering a yoke and pails to pass along the road to and from the well because it in part traversed the railway track for horse-drawn mine cars and they had to climb up and down the slope before the well. Additionally, the bottom of the well was always revealed during the dry season. In winter, they had to go to the well at daybreak while stepping on frost columns, and then scoop up the water after scraping the frost off of the sweep with their hands. In summer, there was not enough water for the sweep to reach if the women did not go to the well during the night or again in the sweltering afternoon. There were also two or three wells in the areas with densely built row houses, Kanayama and Hontani. However, those wells also ran dry and their bottoms had to be cut after the rainy season, and they could not supply enough water to satisfy all the people in the pit.

(They say it is because the transporter lifted up mined coal from the pit with a sweep in the remote past that he is now called a saodori [pole operator].)

Senryus at the Bottom
(Sagattari yagate wa agaru hanetsurube: The well sweep rises soon after it falls)
(Sao nigiri suguni irekomu [sashikomu] hanetsurube: I take the sweep and quickly put it in the well)


Translation Assisted by Mr. Nathan Johndro

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