My grandfather, Seikichi Edo IV (1884-1938), collected more than 20,000 cultural items─for example, manuscripts, a strip of fancy paper use for writing haiku poems (tanka), hanging-picture scrolls (kakemono), pictures of great men who wrote letters, writers, poets, critics, scholars, artists, and others─during the Meiji and Showa eras. These collections, the so-called “Edo Seikichi Collections,” survived through two major earthquakes: the Miyagikenoki Earthquake of June 12, 1978 and the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. The latter of the two resulted in my house located in Watari, Miyagi Prefecture being subjected to serious damage from both earthquake and tsunami. Various items in the Edo Seikichi Collections became soaked with marine saltwater, and the damage resulting from these disasters has been minimized owing to restoration assistance from non-profit organizations (NPOs) and Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs. Currently, the Edo Seikichi Collections are being kept at and strictly maintained by the Watari Municipal Local Museum. Parts of the Edo Seikichi Collections have been revealed in a collection of scientific papers I authored. I introduced several works; for example, the diary of Mokutarou Kinoshita (Professor & Dr. Masao Ohta), a kakemono of Dr. Soseki Natsume, and a picture of Yumeji Takeshita. Additionally, the Watari Municipal Local Museum has held two special exhibitions showcasing the Collections. The most important question is “Why did Seikichi Edo IV collect these family heirlooms while living so far from Tokyo, the center of Japan?” He only graduated from Sendai Ni-Chu, a junior high school, under the old education system. It is possible that he self-taught himself in the field of literature. I have no way of explaining the exchange of letters between great literary figures and Seikichi Edo IV. Finally, in this paper, I describe the arduous difficulty of caring for his collections privately.
