Temporary Coal Storage at the Entrance of a Thin Coalface
May 1966
Teisotan Kabudashiba
[Temporary Coal Storage at the Entrance of a Thin Coalface]
38.1 x 54.2 cm Painting in Watercolors and Ink
Text on the Right
In the mid-Meiji era (1868-1912) when the Chikuho region was separately called Chikuzen (Kama and Kurate Counties, etc.) and Buzen (Tagawa County), most small-scale coal pits in this region had thin coal beds (teisotan). Low roofs of such coalfaces tended to touch hewers' (sakiyamas') heads and disturb them while mining coal in a squatting position as well as bother carriers/helpers (atoyama) while carrying out coal. (Coal beds as thick as 45 centimeters to about 1 meter were mined in this position; those no thicker than 45 centimeters were mined in a lying position.)
Coal sled platforms (suradana) to transfer coal in coal sleds directly into mine cars were impossible to build at entrances to such coalfaces because of their low roofs. That is why carriers working at such coalfaces always had to temporarily store coal (kabudashi) in levels (kanekata). When each of them stored a mine-car-load of coal, they scooped up the coal into a mine car with a four-blade rake (ganzume) and a bamboo winnow (ebijoke). However, if mine car allotment was delayed (hakonagure), they had to store more and more mine-car-loads of coal. Nonetheless, they could not do enough work on such a day. Such a situation was called a nagure.
Miners laid (haeru) tracks for mine cars on the bottoms of mined coal beds in levels after cutting them. They drove (tsukeru) ascending or descending coalfaces from the levels. They made temporary coal storages (kabudashiba) at the entrances of these coalfaces by cutting and widening the inclined sides (kata) of the bottoms. In some coal pits, miners could stand upright on the inclined sides of such bottoms, but they could not raise their heads on the dipped sides (fuke) because of the lowness of the roofs. In most pits, it was also difficult for carriers to scoop up coal into mine cars because there were only small gaps between the roofs and the mine cars. Sura wa tate ni kayasanya kaburashi (kabudashi) ya sarenu, hone wa oreruga (Dialect) (They could not dump coal [kaburashi (kabudashi)] if they did not turn their coal sleds lengthways, though it was very tiresome work).
Text on the Left
The coal sled (sura) had a small box made of two oil cans, which were cut open, laid, and joined together with two tin plates about 15 centimeters wide between them. It could carry approximately 100 kilograms of coal. At that time, each mine car used at pits run by Mr. A had the capacity of 4.2 seki [unknown unit of quantity: probably weight between 400 and 500 kg]. Therefore, the mine car became short of one more coal-sled-load of coal after it was loaded with 4 coal-sled-loads of coal. Each of the carriers at the pits pulled up their coal sled from their coalface about 5 times to fill a mine car.
The gap between the pair of steel skids under the coal sled was not so wide. The gap between the 90-centimeter-long skids for coal sleds used in slopes, which inclined no more than 15 degrees, were narrowed in the front by 20 millimeters to make it easier to pull them.
Words in the Inset
tenjo: roof
ban: bottom
tanza: coal bed
kanekata: level
sumibako: mine car
nobori kiriha: ascending coalface
ban: bottom of the coal bed
kabudashiba: temporary coal storage
wakuhari: beam of the frame
kataashi: frame leg on the inclined side
fukeashi: frame leg on the dipped side
Translation Assisted by Mr. Nathan Johndro
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