Tag Archives: Kesennuma

So Many Words

June 5, 2018 By in Japan, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Today was my last day in Japan. Yu and I wrapped up one last interview of a scientist this morning in Tōkyo and that, as they say, was it. With a few hours to kill, I went to Ueno to check out the National Museum. And as usual, I found inspiration in yet another unexpected place.

This is a photo of a Buddhist text written a godawful long time ago. It’s long, as you can see, but what you don’t know is that the scroll still has several yards way down there at the end. Look at that text. It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? It looks like it was shot off a laser printer, the lines are so crisp, the black so deep. The crazy thing is, we’re looking at the end of the text right here. The beginning is rolled up and tucked away. Couldn’t see it if you wanted to.

Last count, I’ve got 100 pages of fairly small print of my own scrawl in a black Moleskine. It’s solely from the last two weeks. Sitting in my backpack, just begging to be put to use. And so the work begins, I suppose. Of finding beginnings and endings and middles and all the parts that belong, and the so many that do not.

Thank you to everyone who followed along over the past fourteen days. To the folks who left comments on Facebook, retweeted me on Twitter, or had just enough time to thumbs-up an Instagram photo: thank you, and I hope you stay tuned for the stories as they publish. It’s been a hell of a trip. Thanks for joining.

All My Best,

Matt

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.

What Remains

May 31, 2018 By in Japan, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
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Obā-san two and a half years before she died

Everybody dies. But not everyone dies in a natural disaster. Still, this does not make that that life more valuable, or special; nor am I made unique by relation to it. I’ve told myself this, over and over since 3.11.11 in order to resist giving in to the worst kind of narcissistic writing instincts.

But unlike dying at home in bed, in a hospital, or even in war; in a natural disaster the conditions surrounding the death, or fate for that matter, are often unclear. 24-hour media overloads you, by design, floods your mind with information. But never the information you want. That’s what it was like on 3.11.11 for my family. Imagine being halfway across the world, turning on the television, and seeing only a glimpse of a tsunami hitting your home town before the footage switches to something else even more horrifying before it cuts to yet something else before swapping with a talking head in a cool, air-conditioned studio. Do this, and you are now empathizing with my father. There is no information; the phones are down and so is the power. No one is reporting from Tōhoku; rather, they are reporting from above it. It will be days before you learn whether your loved ones survived, before you learn the tsunami took your mother.

We always had a rough idea of what happened to Obā-san, but I felt the need to distill this idea into the fact. Why I felt the need to do so has been the question I’ve struggled to answer on this trip. Because it makes a better, more complete story? If so, then I become the worst kind of profiteer – the kind who makes good on the suffering of others.

You should know that I found what I was looking for. But I’m still trying to answer that question about why I needed to know in the first place.