Pit Workers in the Old Days #2 (Rabbit Miners)
1958 - 1963
Mukashi no Yamabito #2 (Usagi Kofu)
[Pit Workers in the Old Days #2 (Rabbit Miners)]
25.3 x 35.6 cm Ink Painting
Nobody knows who nicknamed the lazy (sukabura in dialect) miner a "usagi kofu (rabbit miner in pit dialect)." Probably, it is because the rabbit or hare can run up slopes quickly but cannot run down them with its short paws and long legs. The "usagi kofu" was a miner who worked underground for a short time and could not produce the quantity of coal expected of each miner. Therefore, such miners exited the pit before eating their lunch. Sometimes, they exited after emptying their lunch pails to lighten their burden.
However, miners at that time were inclined to hate eating lunch so early. They made it a rule to eat their lunch after finishing 80 or 90 % of their work.
The lunch pail at that time was called a gaga or kuragai, composed of an elliptical bamboo container and its lid. It could contain 4 or 5 go (720 or 900 ml) of cooked rice for two people when the rice was packed in both its container and lid. The only other highly processed food they ate was tubular fish-paste ([subo] chikuwa), but they rarely ate such an expensive food. They lived so poorly and meagerly that they usually ate sliced pickled Japanese radish (takuan konkon) sold at 1 sen a radish as the only additional food for their lunch. Even cats and the so-called fish connoisseur ate only salted sardines, smelly salted whale meat, dried flying-fish or sardines. (They did not consider the nutritional value and calories at all like today.)
The Male Miner's Words
"The surippa [a piece of pickled radish cut into the shape of a tie or sleeper] you cut is too thick."
Tattoo on the Man's Left Upper Arm
Dairiki: great power
Text at the Top Right
Yama usagi mimi mijikaku kuro shiro chairo toridori.
Hares have shorter ears than rabbits and have various colors of hair, such as black, white, or brown.
Translation Assisted by Mr. Nathan Johndro
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