Daidarabotchi (だいだらぼっち, Deirabotchi): The Giant Who Left a Pond Behind

What is Daidarabotchi?

A giant was carrying Mt. Fuji on his back across the Kantō plain. Somewhere on the plateau where Sagamihara now stands he stopped to rest, and set the mountain down. While he sat, it put down roots. When he went to pick it up again it would not move, and never would again. He stamped his foot in frustration — and the hollow it left filled with water and became the pond that is now in Kanuma Park.

That is the Deirabotchi legend as Sagamihara City records it among its registered historic sites, and it is why Fuji is where it is and why the plateau is pocked with marshes. Shōbu-numa in Fuchinobe, Ōnuma and Konuma in Minami ward, and low ground in several other districts are told the same way: footprints.

What does daidarabotchi mean?

The name has dozens of local forms — daidarabotchi, deirabotchi, daidarabō, dairabō — and no settled kanji. Daidara is probably a swelling of dai, great, doubled for size; botchi or bō is the ending for a boy or a monk, as in bōzu. The great big fellow. The folklorist Yanagita Kunio collected the names and the footprint-ponds across Japan as early as 1927 and found them from Kantō to Kyushu. It is pronounced DIE-dah-rah-BOH-chee.

Appearance

Enormous — big enough to carry Fuji. The legend gives no face, no clothes and no measurements. Our illustration shows him standing over the misty plain with Fuji behind him; the proportions are there to tell the story, not to record a height.

Behavior and abilities

• He carries mountains. The whole legend depends on it.
• He rests. And pays for it.
• He leaves footprints. Hollows and ponds across the plateau.

The pond today

Kanuma Park’s pond is a landscaped feature of a modern park. The marsh was filled and the park laid out, with a pond made at its centre, and the city’s 2025 plan for the area treats it as both a park pond and a legend site. The legend has been kept with the place. The pond is not an untouched footprint.

Weaknesses and countermeasures

None are recorded, and none are needed. Daidarabotchi harms no one in this story. He is defeated by the mountain itself, which simply refuses to be picked up again.

Documented legend and later imagery

Documented legend. Sagamihara’s Deirabotchi carried Mt. Fuji, rested, found it rooted, and stamped in frustration; the footprint became the pond of Kanuma Park, and other hollows in the city are told as his footprints too. Giant legends with different details are found across Japan, collected by Yanagita from 1927.

Later imagery. Modern versions make Daidarabotchi a threatening colossus, or a single giant who dug Lake Biwa and piled the earth up into Fuji in one story. Those belong to other regions and later retellings. The Sagamihara giant is more ordinary than that. He was tired, he sat down, and the mountain would not come with him. The pond is what his frustration looks like.