Japanese Artists Draw Catfish To Encourage The Earthquake Sufferers

Drawn by shigeokahide.

Many Japanese artists drew Namazu-e(鯰絵) to encourage earthquake sufferers on Twitter.

What is Namazu-e? Namazu-e is a motif drawn in ukiyoe (Wikipedia) during Edo period (Wikipedia). “Namazu” means a catfish in Japanese. In old days, Japanese believed that the earthquake occurs because of a catfish behaves violently in underground. In 1855, earthquake of magnitude 6.9 attacked Kanto region(known as Ansei big earthquake – Wikipedia). In those days, many ukiyoe artists prayed for revive from a disaster and drew the ukiyoe of the heroes exterminate a catfish. Variations of full many Namazu-e increased one after another. For example, god of Shinto exterminates a catfish, catfish apologizes to the people etc…

The Namazu-e project rose from this earthquake is a modern version of ukiyoe of Namazu-e. Please search hashtag #namazue on Twitter. You can find various kind of hot artworks. 

* This project is not meant to harm or kill any real catfish.

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