北海道蘭越町の地神塔 : (付)山梨県の地神信仰

Four memorial stones honored to Earth Spirit are set up in the four wards in Rankoshi Town, Shiribeshi Dirtrict, the southwestern Hokkaido. Japanese herring fishermen had begun to settle on the coast of this district since the late eighteenth century. However, Japanese peasants could not expand their farming inland until the Meiji Era. In Rankoshi Town, the lower basin of the River Shiribetsu, besides the fall of marine products, land reclamation and railroad passing through of the southern part brought centralization of the administral and economical activities from the maritime area to the farming area. Today a few housholds are engaged in fishing lamprey (Entosphenus japoncus Martens) in the stream flowing through the rice paddies spread out on the flood plain. Immigrants have brought various customs of their home villages scattering all over Japan into their new settlements. Japanese folk customs usually differ from place to place, so the inhabitants were forced to choose some elements of them as their new colonies\u27 customs. They usually could find no religious edifices such as Shinto shrines and Buddhism temples in their communities. Setting up the memorial stones was perhaps the most convenient way to satisfy the peasants\u27 religious sentiments in newly opened lands. Sometimes, they set up the temporary wooden posts, instead. This custom has been followed by neighboring settlers who were previously thought it unfamiliar and so Earth Spirit Cult spread throughout as a shared belief in their regions. The upper part of the River Shiribetsu called the Foothill Zone of Mt. Yotei has been colonized by two routes other than Rankoshi and the terraine differs from the lower basin of this river. In reclamation of the Foothill Zone, the pioneering roles were played chiefly by the people from Tokushima Prefecture, one of the most prosperous areas of Earth Spirit Cult in Japan. Therefore, in the Foothill Zone, the colonists have set up memorial stones and celebrated Earth Sprit twice a year. The people of Rankoshi had not aquired this custom without four wards. Again, the inscription on one stone outsteps the manners of this clut. These seem the marginal events outside of the Shiribeshi-Iburi Zone of Earth Spirit Cult. Appendix. Earth Spirit Cult of Yamanashi Prefecture