Tokachi

Again explosions, smoke, lava and destruction visited the Pacific. This time a fractured lake bottom contributed heavily to the event by emptying a deep body of water in a sudden and enormous sluice upon mountain hamlets and terraced, rice-grown countryside. About 1,000 were killed, though a month of anticipatory rumbling had warned them to flee. The eruption was out of the bowels of Mount Tokachi, in the centre of Hokkaido, northernmost of the main islands of the island empire of Japan and last retreat of the Hairy Ainus.* One of the 50 technically active of Japan's 200 or more volcanic peaks, Mount Tokachi, is at the intersection of two volcanic ranges that intersect on the kite-shaped island. Three main explosions took place, the first setting loose the water that had lain cradled in the crater since time immemorial, the third causing an appalling landslide as the crater walls were hurled down the mountain. It was Japan's first long dormant volcano to erupt since Mount Sakurajima in 1914. The semi-sacred Fujiyama has done nothing violent since 1707.

*A race seemingly unconnected with the surrounding Mongolian peoples, thought to have migrated to the northern islands of Japan from Manchuria, a remnant of Neolithic stock. They are taller than the Japanese, heavier-built; their hairiness has been exaggerated from the fact that the men never shave and the women, admiring hirsute embellishment, daub themselves with mustache designs in pot-smut. They are bear-worshipers, non-agricultural.