What a Friend We Have in Jizōs 45

In 1923, the Great Kantō earthquake caused the sea to recede at an unprecedented velocity. The waves rushed back in a great wall over twenty feet high, drowning some and crushing others, beneath an avalanche of waterborne debris. The total death toll exceeded 2,000 victims. Large sections of the shore slid into the ocean. The beach rose six feet, creating a new wide expanse of sand, fully exposed above the waterline.
The last of our own sand in Kamakura was trickling through the hourglass. At the base of the stairway was the Maiden ritual dance stage, where Yoritomo forced the mistress of the hunted Yoshitsune, Lady Shizuka, to perform for him. Pregnant with Yoshitsune’s child, rather than celebrate the Shogun, she sang and danced to express her love for his fugitive brother, his joy and skill in cutting leaves as they fell from a tree, and her sorrow at his plight. 

                                        ‘Flung up at the moon,
                                        Thrown down at the grass-
                                        The dancer’s hands.’
                                                        Sixty Senryu