When I picked up this book, “The Lean of the Daikannon,” (Daikannon no Katamuki) I thought that the Daikannon statue on the cover, and referred to in the title, was a completely fictitious creation. I figured the author must have drawn inspiration from a giant statue on Awaji Island[1] in western Japan that was torn down in 2023.
This novel, however, seems to be based on a real, 100-meter tall Daikannon statue [2] that stands in the city of Sendai in Miyagi prefecture in northern Japan, having been built in 1991 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city government[3].
The author, Taro Yamanobe, made his debut in 2018 with the novel, “Itsuka Fukai Anani Ochirumade.[4]” He was born in 1975 in Koriyama city in Fukushima prefecture, which was struck by a giant earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, and also suffered from the subsequent nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The story takes place in “a large city in Tohoku,” about eight years after the 2011 earthquake. The protagonist is Shuji Takamura[5], a 22-year-old newly hired employee at the city hall’s disaster prevention section. One morning, he sees four elderly people at the foot of the Daikannon statue. They are gathered at the entrance, which is shaped like a large, Eastern-style dragon with fangs sticking out and its mouth open wide, large enough to devour any sightseers who want to enter the statue. The visitors are pushing with all their might against the dragon’s fangs, which are protruding up from its lower jaw.
The four are a concerned group of local residents, who think the statue is leaning toward one side and regularly come visit to press against the dragon’s fangs, in hopes of helping the statue regain its footing and an upright stance. To Shuji’s untrained eyes, the statue doesn’t seem to have any lean at all[6], and he tells the group that the city hall will check and confirm the situation first, a reply met with grumbles from the elderly members, who say that’s all they have been hearing from city officials. The group tells Shuji that Kana Sawai, his predecessor, had joined them in pushing on the fangs and ask him whether she had been re-assigned to another section for daring to deviate from official policy.
Back at the city hall, Shuji informs his boss, Naito, about his interaction with the local group. Naito urges Shuji to avoid pressing against the fangs, insisting that city hall needs to maintain its “neutrality[7]” on the matter.
From there, the story evolves into one of the most bizarre tales I’ve ever read.
The statue delivers monologues. It thinks local residents are pushing on the dragon’s fangs to soothe their anxieties, even though the statue itself isn’t sure whether it has any lean[8]. As long as their efforts provide local residents with some inner peace, it’s fine, the Daikannon statue thinks.
Local residents are split between those who want to push on the dragon’s fangs to support the statue, and those who want city hall to blow up and demolish it, worried that the statue will keel over and come crashing down on them. The residents urge the city hall to address their concerns.
Shuji is told that to properly assess whether the statue has a lean, he needs to track down the design blueprints for the statue. He learns that a local resident who lives on the outskirts of the city, Nobuaki Amano, knows the whereabouts of the blueprint and tracks him down. In the process, he gains the trust of Amano, who lives alone in a house that he used to share with his wife, daughter and granddaughter. His daughter and granddaughter have been missing since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and his wife later went back to her parents’ home and hasn’t come back since. Amano tells Shuji he wants to continue to live at his house, because he wants to be there if his daughter and granddaughter return.
Prodded on by local residents, city hall officials weigh their options, including the possibility of blowing it up.
The statue seems to understand and empathize with the worries, anxieties, and disappointments that people in its vicinity experience. It feels lonely when Shuij feels lonely.
Even weirder, the statue has a cockpit-like room that comes equipped with a button for blasting off. The statue looks ready to fly off somewhere else, and hence escape the clutches of those who seek to dismantle it.
Shuji and Kana, who both want to avoid having to dismantle the statue, decide one day to visit the cockpit room. They press the button together and are disappointed when nothing happens. With that desperation bid having failed, they come up with a plan to embrace the statue’s “lean” by celebrating it and getting it widely recognized as a feature of the statue, taking inspiration from the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy. The event succeeds and the statue is saved.
I wonder what the statue’s “lean” signifies. Why do some residents insist on pressing against the dragon’s fangs to help support the statue and fix its lean, while others are eager to blow it up? Perhaps the fang-pushing residents are trying to support and preserve the statue as a way to remember the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and all the people who suffered from it. The advocates for blowing up the statue might be regarding it as something that reminds them of painful memories and are eager to turn the page.
It is a thought-provoking, poignant story, one that leaves you feeling slightly sad but upbeat, like the clear, light-blue sky on the book’s cover.
[1] A couple of years ago, I came across a Japanese newspaper story about a giant, ageing Daikannon statue that needed to be torn down, because pieces of its outer wall had started to peel off due to wear and tear and lack of maintenance. The 100-meter statue had been built in 1982 on Awaji Island in western Japan by a local businessman.[1] The statue, which had been built about a decade before the collapse of Japan’s asset price “bubble” in the early 1990s, was initially popular among tourists. Its popularity, however, proved fleeting, and the facility was shuttered in 2006. I found it mind-boggling that someone would decide to build a 100-meter statue on property that they owned, and that it was still waiting to be torn down, some 16 years after it was closed to the public.
References: “The giant Kannon statue that became a ruin and is now, for some reason, owned by the national government,” Yomiuri Shimbun, Jan. 21, 2022.
『廃虚となった巨大観音像、なぜかオーナーは国…「税金」９億円かけて異例の解体工事中』読売新聞、２０２２年１月２１日付。https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/20220121-OYT1T50211/
“Dismantling and removal of Daikannon statue is completed, government eyes selling it,” Kobe Shimbun, Sept. 22, 2023.
「大観音像の解体・撤去工事完了、国は売却視野 活性化へ地元が跡地利用模索 淡路市」神戸新聞、２０２３年９月２２日付。像の解体は２０２１年６月に始まり、２０２２年５月に撤去され、その後、台座や地中の基礎の部分が取り除かれて工事が終了したのが２０２３年５月３０日だった、とのこと。
[2] The Daikannon statue is slightly taller than the Statue of Liberty, which is “305 feet and 1 inch (about 93m) in height from the ground to the tip of the flame.” according to the U.S. National Park Service’s website. https://www.nps.gov/stli/faqs.htm#:~:text=How%20tall%20is%20the%20Statue,structure%20in%20New%20York%20City.
[3] According to the description of the Daikannon statue in Sendai, the “Sendai-Daikannon, the Byakue-Kannon, is said to be the mother of the Kannons, who gives birth to various Buddhas, and is one of the 33 Kannons.”
The entrance to the Sendai-Daikannon statue “is a dragon’s mouth, which promises good luck and success as the dragon rises vigorously.”
[4] The title means something along the lines of “Until you fall into a deep hole.”
[5] “Daikannon,” p. 8.
[6] “Daikannon,” p. 14.
[7] “Daikannon,” p. 16.
[8] “Daikannon,” p. 23.
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