Tag Archives: writing

A Tsunami’s Stone

June 1, 2018 By in Japan, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
IMG_4754

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.

 

What Remains

May 31, 2018 By in Japan, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
IMG_4722

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.

 

 

 

See With Your Own Two Eyes

May 29, 2018 By in Japan, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
IMG_4587

First step: orient yourself.

My first full day in Kesennuma, my cousin Motō played enthusiastic guide to my dad and me. We first visited the family grave site, then the Kesennuma fish museum, which now dedicates half its real estate to the tsunami and reconstruction. A short video ran through seven-plus years of history, and it was a perfect way to begin my time in Kesennuma. In other words: gut-wrenching.

In the afternoon, tsunami walking tours in association with a public tsunami awareness event were offered. So, accompanied by Yu, the intrepid Japanese linguist I hired for this trip, we walked for two hours over a couple miles of  Kesennuma’s tsunami-affected area. I should note here that I couldn’t possibly have planned things so perfectly as to begin my Kesennuma stay with a period of initial familiarization aided by public events. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I had only a rough sketch for my thirteen days in Japan, and precious few sources to speak with. But a spate of coincidences have occurred that have in turn resulted in a cascade of doors that opened other doors, beginning with the public awareness event.

Our guide, a retired gentleman Hashimoto Shigeyoshi (family name first in Japan) who ran a Kesennuma evacuation center on 3.11.11, began with the photo pictured here, and it was a powerful way to begin the tour. The top image was taken from the top floor of the parking garage you can see in the background of my photo on 3.11. The enormous standing wave in the image is cresting near the height of the parking garage. It is one thing to see disaster electronically, maybe even feel it over long distances. But it is another entirely to stand on dry ground under a bluebird day as a band plays nearby and the scent of good food drifts with the wind, only to realize that in that spot, I’d have been some thirty feet underwater on that day in 2011.

For the next 120-plus minutes Hashimoto-san walked us around Kesennuma, and I’m not sure he stopped speaking with passion and conviction for less than a minute or two. It was only supposed to be a 90 minute tour, but I could not help but stop him every few steps to ask more questions. I’d like to say that I knew everything beforehand, that years spent staring at articles and papers and pictures and videos had told me everything I needed to know. But if that was true, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.

The old adage that seeing is believing is just true enough to make the saying last. I would amend it slightly: some things must be seen to be known more fully.