下北半島における津波の伝承の解釈と埋没ヒバ林の成因

抄録

Some specific legends and traces related with historical tsunamis have been handed down among the people in the northern part of Honshu, Japan. Examples are the forest of Hiba buried by a large amount of sand and the resettlement of villages damaged by tsunamis in Shimokita Peninsula, the northeast Honshu. The aim of this paper is to reexamine their reliability by compiling old documents and results from numerical simulation of tsunamis. Results from old documents combined with numerical simulation suggest that the legends at the age of Tensho and Kan-ei period would be associated with not tsunamis but floods. And the story of damage at Tanabu town by the 1611 Keicho tsunami causing resettlement to a higher place is not reliable because the simulated tsunami could not reach the locations of the village. The sequence of events of sand transport to bury Hiba forest at four different ages could be found by filed investigation and result of dating of ¹⁴C. The ages do not correspond to the tsunami events. Such process can be explained by a formation of sand dune, meaning that a large amount of sand movement should not be caused by tsunamis.