Tag Archives: Japan

The Kaze no Denwa

June 3, 2018 By in Japan, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

IMG_4934A few days ago, I dropped Yu, the interpreter who made my time in Tōhoku possible, off at the train station in Ichinoseki, punched my destination into Google Maps, and drove a couple of hours up the coast to Ōtsuchi. My destination (or so I thought) was the kaze no denwa, or “wind phone.”

I learned about the kaze no denwa through an amazing episode on This American Life, which you can find here. The episode is called “One Last Thing Before I Go” and the segment, produced by Miki Meek, is titled “Really Long Distance.” It’s the story of a telephone booth in Itaru Sasaki’s backyard, which he put up before 3.11.11 to help him grieve his lost brother. He’d enter the phone booth, which has a rotary phone (unconnected to anything,) dial a number, and talk to his brother. Since 2011, Japanese grieving the loss of loved ones in the tsunami have streamed to Ōtsuchi to use Sasaki’s wind phone.

On the drive, I confess to having little idea of what I’d do once I got to the phone. And once I got to Ōtsuchi, I learned that the Atlas Obscura blurb about the kaze no denwa had an incorrect map of the location. I had a hell of a time trying to find it. Despite the notoriety of it, no one seemed to know where it was. And, being sans interpreter, I had to fall back on rudimentary Japanese and a lot of hand gestures and mouth noises. At one point, I was wandering through what was clearly personal property, cutting myself on thorns and brambles and generally cursing the Atlas Obscura entry in addition to my own incompetence. As the hours passed, my anxiety crept up as I feared that I would have to return to Kesennum empty-handed.

I finally found a very nice lady in her yard, who spoke enough English and knew where it was, to guide me on foot. And just like that, there I was.

It wasn’t a pretty day. The peaceful views of the Pacific from Sasaki-san’s back yard are now blocked by construction of the Sanriku Expressway. It had been raining intermittently from a gray sky. Gloomy, not the picture of resolution or catharsis. And I still didn’t know what I’d say on the phone. I’m not a superstitious person, and I don’t follow the ancestor-worship that survives in today’s odd blend of Shinto and Buddhist tradition that is secular Japan’s take on a national religion. I knew she wouldn’t be on the other end. So, I sat down on the bench and wrote her a letter that I could read over the phone.

A few of you have reached out and expressed your hope that I can find peace from this trip. And I thank you for it, but this aspect of the trip — the search for answers regarding my grandmother’s death — has never been about peace. Life is messy, and death makes it even more so. I didn’t know my grandmother, not really. So maybe I came to Japan to grieve, but maybe I also came to understand who I am and how the tsunami defines some aspect of it.

When I left, the clouds didn’t part and no angels sang. But it felt good to have made it there despite a few hiccups, like it was the right thing to do after all. I guess that’s a kind of peace.

Note: The coordinates for the kaze no denwa are 39 degrees, 23 minutes, 9.98 seconds North by  141 degrees, 55 minutes, 54.92 seconds East. Also, if you enter the kanji for kaze no denwa ( 風の電話  ) into Google Maps, it will take you right there. If you’re headed there and want some tips, shoot me an email. Due to increasing traffic, it’s only open to the public 10a-3p Sunday through Saturday, so factor that into your planning. 

 

Remnants of the Tsunami

June 2, 2018 By in Writing Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment
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I’m not sure where I end and the picture begins.

A true professional would never say that he/she wanted to run away from his/her subject. But on my last day in Kesennuma, I visited a local museum that had a tsunami exhibit. It was one of the last things I did during my time in Tōhoku (the last was sit down for a re-interview that I thought would take fifteen minutes but ended up over an hour long.) The museum was, to say the least, difficult.

We’re supposed to be objective, unemotional, detached. Yet we’re are also supposed to remain human. I’m not sure how that’s possible.

One of the fundamental aspects of storytelling is the recognition of what makes us human. Loss, grief, love: these are just a few of the things that we connect with when we read a story, then pass it along. The best stories stay with us.

I suppose it helps to not have a personal connection if you want to remain objective. And in this case, the storyteller by necessity retreats. The story takes precedence. Nobody remembers the writer; everybody remembers the story.

I suppose that in my case — which is to say, the three stories I’m to write — I’m hoping for a happy medium; an even balance of story and teller. I want you to know that I’m invested. But I also want you to be able to look beyond the authenticity factor of my own experience and recognize something beyond the primacy of the narrator. I get it: it’s a tall order. But I am nothing if not aspirational, if not hopeful.

Here is where I say something smart. Where I reference my betters, or the type of story I aspire to write. But I have none of that for you this day, folks. All I’ve got is a personal story, researched to the extent possible given a working life, and a passion to get it done. I’m not sure that’s enough to go the distance. But in the next few months, you’ll be able to judge for yourselves. I hope you find that my words are equal to the task.

A Tsunami’s Stone

June 1, 2018 By in Japan, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
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Hanōkizawa-san (left) and myself at the Yoshihama Tsunami-ishi

It seems remarkably privileged to say, but it can be a bit much to immerse yourself in tragedy. Even Japanese tsunami survivors are shrouded in it, because everyone on the Sanriku coast of Tōhoku lost something, someone, or both. I don’t know how real journalists do it. I suppose it helps to have some distance — a lack of a personal connection surely helps. But if I’ve learned anything on this trip, it’s a healthy appreciation for people who spend weeks face-to-face with horrible things. After only a few days in Kesennuma, I’d reached a bit of a saturation point. But it just so happened that on Tuesday, we had an appointment in Yoshihama, about an hour north of Kesennuma.

In the years since the tsunami, I have looked for stories that connected me to the landscape from across the Pacific. Stories of loss and recovery abounded. But for the most part, they were all so temporal, so pegged with the timeliness we have come to expect from journalism. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; it is what it is. Turns out, we want to read things laden with meaning in the here and now, and that’s what journalism provides. There’s a reason most articles are just a few hundred words: and it has to do with the desire to consume one moment before moving on to the next.

I discovered a handful of stories about “tsunami stones,” some of which date back millennia, and for the most part, served as warnings regarding past Sanriku tsunamis. The meaning within the frame of a news article is obvious; here’s this old thing that everyone forgot about that warned of exactly the type of event that necessitated the article in the first place. Timely, meaningful: exactly the type of thing we like to read about.

But I began to wonder if the stories written were only telling one side of the narrative, whether there wasn’t something deeper that would require a more in-depth telling, unconstrained by the moment itself.

Enter the Yoshihama tsunami stone.

I can’t give too much of the story I plan to write away just yet, but on 3.11.11, Yoshihama suffered only one fatality while its neighbors to the north and south were hit much harder. In other words, Tuesday was good.

This is Hanōkizawa-san, one of the discoverers of the Yoshihama stone, and myself at the the locals call tsunami-ishi. I’m looking forward to telling its story.