The Coal Pit (Yama) and the Fox (Transportation of a Burnt Patient)
1958 - 1963

Yama to Kitsune (Yakedo Kanja no Yuso)
[The Coal Pit (Yama) and the Fox (Transportation of a Burnt Patient)]
20.9 x 29.8 cm Ink Painting

A lot of people all in a sweat carried a stretcher hastily made of a door and other materials up Myojin-zaka Slope of Yakiyama-toge Pass. They transported a patient burnt in a gas explosion underground. Their destination was not Kyushu University Hospital, but Musashi Onsen hot springs, to which they carried a recuperating patient for hot-spring therapy.
There was no doctor with an inpatient's ward in towns, not to mention coal pits. However serious the patients' illnesses were, they had to receive medical treatment at home. In this shown case, several people in the patient's neighborhood gathered together and carried the patient on the stretcher to Futsukaichi by shouldering it. It was very tiresome work to do it though they shouldered the stretcher in rotation. (Even the people in the pit had a strong sense of charity.) Myojin-zaka Slope was on the way of the old Yakiyama-toge Pass on the Iizuka side. In addition, there were fears of attacks from foxes when night came along the way. They say that foxes have a strong obsession to desperately peel and eat burnt or scalded skins instead of pockmarks.


Translation Assisted by Mr. Nathan Johndro

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