The other day, I wrote a bit about how a tsunami that hit Kumamoto after an eruption of the Mount Unzen in 1792 was discussed in the Japanese media as a previous example of the kind of tsunami that occurred in Indonesia:
https://openroadmedia.com/ebook/The-Big-Wave/9781453263570
Well, today I happened across some information about how a novel by Pearl Buck was based on that story. According to the following Japanese website, Ms. Buck heard about what happened in Shimabara and Kumamoto on a visit to Nagasaki and that led to write her book “The Big Wave” (Japanese text quote below).
https://rnavi.ndl.go.jp/kaleido/entry/82.php
By the way, I wondered if this book by Pearl Buck might have been responsible for the introduction of the word tsunami into English but a little Googling revealed that that honor is sometimes given to another person with connections to Kumamoto: Lafcadio Hearn (though there was another person who used “tsunami” in English a year earlier):
“The etymology sources I checked listed the earliest English usage of tsunami as being in 1897 when Patrick Lafcadio Hearn, a writer best known for his books about Japan, used it in Gleanings from Buddha Fields. "
https://grammarpartyblog.com/2011/03/22/tsunami-an-etymological-perspective/
Alas, the Kumamoto connections seem to end with Hearn’s previous residence in Kumamoto – he was not in Kumamoto when the book was published and the tsunami he wrote about occurred in northern Japan.
By the way, you can download the text of Gleanings from Buddha Fields for free on the internet – it’s in the public domain.
– Kirk
「パール・バックはノーベル文学賞を受賞したアメリカの文学者です。昭和2年の夏に南京事件のほとぼりが冷めるまで中国を離れ、長崎県の雲仙に数カ月間滞在しました。その時に島原大変肥後迷惑の話を聞いて、The Big Wave（1947年）という子供向けの物語を書いたのではないかと言われています。」