Musicians, both of them.
Erickson, the Los Angeles writer who had come to New York to have this conversation with me, with musicians on his clothes.
So I appeared at those two events, and also had some interviews for magazines, and appeared on radio as well. I was invited to be on NPR by Roland Kelts, the author of Japanamerica. For the radio, and for the magazine articles, too, I was getting questions as a novelist from Fukushima. I spoke about my own questions about how I should use my imagination in the time following that 3.11 event. I tried to speak as honestly as possible, and the reactions suggest that I was rather successful. I gave three public readings. I felt I had to read publicly; I felt it important to read in my own voice. I gave two readings in Japanese and my first attempt at a reading in English. I was pleased; this seemed to be received positively. I was pleased how it seemed to be a visceral reaction, a very physical response. I felt that I was communicating. A number of good nights. I met with people, and more people, and with drinking and talking I could feel the growth of friendship.
But then, separate from all that, were the numbers.
The date.
3.11’s twin, 9/11, put out an unbuffered roar. I was shaken by the howl.
This was the night of May 1. Osama bin Laden was brought down. By the U.S. (military). Precise information was, at the outset, nonexistent.
I find that I can only write this in the form of poetry.
I did not hear the voices of joy.
I did not hear the echoing chorus, in the middle of the night, there at “ground zero.”
USA! USA!
I did not hear the repeated shouts.
But it happened.
That which brought such joy. That victory.
The celebration.
I went the following day.
Because, as luck would have it, I had no events scheduled for that day.
I had one completely open day.
I had someone to accompany me around the city. When we got into the taxi he said, simply, “Ground Zero.”
He was an American; he was Japanese. He had dual citizenship.
I had my mouth form the words, “Ground Zero.”
The place—ground—that marks the lack—zero—resulting from simultaneous terrorist attacks.
That phrase marked, of course, something different before September 11, 2001.
It marked the point of explosion for the nuclear bombs.
That was “ground zero.”
On the night following the assassination of bin Laden, we arrived.
No more rubble, no more grit and dust.
A construction site.
A new symbol (a symbolic building) was being constructed.
No cries of joy.
Although they might come in future.
There were flags. There were the Stars and Stripes. And signs too: “God Bless America.”
New York was a disaster site. I could see that.
But I really hadn’t understood it. I had forgotten that fact.
But this disaster site, the tragedy resulting from this disaster site, I now realized:
It had an enemy.
This tragedy had a mastermind behind it.
Bin Laden.
Who could be killed.
But for us, no such thing. For us, no mastermind behind Japan’s tragedy.
So then what do we do?
We have no one we can hate.
Which means that this is the sole source of hope.
For us, keep going, without hatred.
With no thoughts of revenge, go forward.
With no thoughts of retribution, go forward.
Words arose in my brain, of their own accord, and became voice.
They became voice. The voice spoke:
“It’s OK to have been born, you know.”
So it’s OK to have been born. I heard a voice like a whisper. The one thing that I can do is not hate others, is to not be hateful of the world; which is to say, to adopt an attitude of love. That is what I am hoping for, that we can adopt such an attitude. The hope is like an appeal. Starting at a particular place and time of my life (perhaps I should call it my “ground zero”), I reversed my attitudes and came to love others. Like a fool. Like an absolute fool; that’s fine.
And besides, I have always loved my brother and my sister. The three of us together. I loved my grandmother.
I love my father and mother. That’s fine, too.
The night before leaving New York I drank quite a lot. In the hotel bar, all of us, quite a party. My English is passable, and it was sufficient to communicate. When engaged in conversation with Kawakami Hiromi and Ozawa Minoru we used Japanese, of course; the unconscious switch to English turned into a hodge-podge; a lot of fun. Joshua the poet was writing poetry in a notebook. He would write even as he was drinking. Ozawa the haiku master was also writing, he was writing things on the bar’s paper napkins. Just when I began to wonder what sort of haiku he might be writing, he put the paper in my hand. It was for me, about me, a poem to capture my likeness. It read:
Moans, Quiets
Yells, Prays
Sweats
As much the sound of the words as anything. There, sung in poetry, me in New York. It was me, straight up, completely, thoroughly, me. I gave public readings, trusting the power of the unadorned voice, and he got it, all of it. With this haiku. I was moved by the power of his writing, his instincts. This poet was truly a poet, the haiku master was truly a haiku master. So what of me? For this novelist, novels.
I really did not have much free time on this trip (nothing bad about that), but I did have three or four hours that opened up. So, of course, I walked. To say that “I just walked and walked” is not metaphorical. Well, it may be a metaphor, but it also serves as something of a core tenet of my life. It’s New York; one has to head for the parks. As the novice, I had to make those initial steps in Central Park. Before I entered the park I heard the sound of hooves. Horse hooves running on asphalt. Numerous horses and carriages. The sharp staccato, tottottattattottotto. There were also many starlings in the park. Seemed to be playing with the weeds that shot up through the grass and the dirt and the piles of fallen dried leaves. I imagine they were actually searching for insects. Squirrels, too. And dogs being taken for walks, tens of them, hundreds of them, but they seemed slightly different in form from the dog varieties that I knew from Japan. There was a freshness in that.
Feeling a little hungry, I bought a hot dog (and a mineral water) from the cart and ate there. Many runners, many bicyclists. From there I set off toward Strawberry Fields. There is a spot in Central Park clearly marked with a sign. Strawberry Fields is, of course, at least as far as I know, the name of an orphanage. It was located in England, in Liverpool, the port city that looks out onto the Irish Sea, and the source of the imagination that went into the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” to be sung into eternity, forever. I sang it as well. And the characters in my novel, the brothers in The Holy Family, sang it too.
It was a place to remember John Lennon.
It was a monument. At the spot where three walking paths meet each other is a mosaic. I found out later that it was designed by Yoko Ono.
But of course. John was shot in New York. In 1980. Four years before that he had received his permanent residency for the United States.
The novel was calling; I knew it. My novel was calling me. So I returned to Fukushima. From here, with this essay as well, I return to Fukushima. I will skip the return to Japan. A description of that event is not necessary. I am still in that small car with the Kashiwa license plate. With young S, with Ms. S, and with Y. I had now visited the Hamadōri section of Fukushima, the north side of the meltdown, but I had not yet seen the south side of the meltdown. I had not yet gone toward the border of Ibaraki Prefecture; not yet felt the southern tip of Fukushima Prefecture in my skin, so had to make our way from there north through Iwaki City.
We came upon the old barrier gate at
Nakoso. It was on a hill. The Nakoso barrier gate, together with that other famous barrier at Shirakawa, has often appeared in traditional poetry. In short, this spot marks the beginning of the michinoku—the lands beyond the pale, the deep north. Both are poetic utamakura, places often sung of in traditional poetry. While lingering in the area, we heard the cry of a nightingale.
We had arrived via the Jōban expressway. Seven or eight kilometers after exiting at the Iwaki-Nakoso highway interchange. In the morning of the day following our time in Shinchimachi, then Sōma, and Minami Sōma; that following morning. On our way to the gate at Nakoso we stopped at a convenience store. The first convenience store we had stopped at in Iwaki.
They were short on supplies.
We had arrived at our destination, but the fact is that no one can say with certainty that this is the actual location of the Nakoso barrier gate. Some authorities place it here; that’s all that can be said. The simple fact of the matter is that we were standing in a park that commemorates the barrier gate. There were innumerable memorial stones, the kind with poems engraved on them, some might say too many: stele engraved with waka poems, tablets engraved with the lines of famous poets like Ki no Tsurayuki, Ono no Komachi, and Izumi Shikibu, a veritable forest of them.
And then a haiku by Matsuo Basho.
Lines of different poems, numerous stanzas.
The name “Nakoso” is said to mean “Do not come here, you northern barbarians.” According to one explanation, anyway. Many unexplained aspects of the border between Ibaraki and Fukushima Prefectures remain. What we know is that there used to be an ancient border in this area (or an area understood to be a border), a place, for example, that separated the Hitachi and Mutsu lands, which meant it delineated the Tohoku and Kanto regions. The two were distinctly separated here; there is no doubt about that. “Do not come here, you Yi barbarians from the north.” This phrase can be translated with another layer of meaning: “You people from Tohoku, you indigenous peoples from up there, do not come down here to our Kanto.”
A heavy warning.
Even so, it is a tourist area, now a park. I listened intently for the song of the nightingale. I felt nothing else. The Izumi Shikibu poem struck me as very fine, however.
We returned to the parking lot and drove down from the hill. The park housed a museum devoted to literature related to the Nakoso barrier gate, but it was closed. A sign was on the door; it said simply, “Museum temporarily closed.” The building showed no fractures or damage. All the various sites related to the gate, and all the memorial tablets, seemed to have escaped damage from the earthquake. At least as far as we could tell, anyway.
Route 6, on which we were traveling, hugs the shoreline; the route is known locally, of course, as the Rikuzen Beach Highway. The JR Jōban line runs parallel. This on the Pacific Ocean side. This is the Pacific side of Fukushima Prefecture, its southern tip. The Nakoso beach was visible through the right-hand window, I could see it by looking over the shoulder of Y, who was sitting next to me. But all the damage wrought by the tsunami, the terrible damage reported on, was not verifiable by the eye. Perhaps a fortunate accident of local geography. Given the shape of the bay, the beach.
But there is one detail here that I cannot fail to explain.
Shortly after we left—I mean immediately after—for a number of days on end, Hamadōri was rocked by aftershocks. On April 7 there was a major tremor that registered a strong 6 in Miyagi Prefecture, a strong 5 in Hamadōri. Then in the evening of April 11, a weak 6. A little after noon on the following day, the twelfth, a weak 6. As far as I can tell by looking at the map (the map recording the shock epicenters), the epicenter was directly underneath the barrier gate at Nakoso. For nearly all of the shocks.
The Jōban expressway was closed because of landslides. This was on the stretch of road that we had driven, in the area where we had been. The damage caused by those aftershocks resulted in a number of deaths.
This morning (the morning of May 14) brought another major shock with the epicenter just off the Fukushima coast. It registered a 4 in Hamadōri. In Iwaki City, also 4.
I have to write these things down.
Visualizations. Those poetic memorial stones, I wonder how they fared. Wonder if the poems have crumbled.
Off to the side was the Nakoso beach. I could see it over Y’s shoulder, just beyond his head. Just a momentary glimpse, but a surprising scene. A fitness center was there, the building still intact, with all the treadmills still lined up and facing the sea. It appeared to still be open for business. It addled my brain: quietly, calmly waiting there for the ocean, a phantom fitness club patiently waiting for the ocean to come, all those phantom indoor runners.
I probably should have asked young S, who was driving, to pull over to the side of the road, just for a moment. Because, just maybe, this was not a phantom. But we had already driven past. We continued north on National Highway 6. We were heading for the port at Onahama. The car navigation system on the dashboard continued to receive radio broadcasts and was playing the NHK news. Inside the car. It was now eleven a.m. The main news story was about the current situation at Fukushima Daiichi. While listening to that we were making our way smoothly, one kilometer, two kilometers, ever closer to the meltdown. As you would expect, the four of us found ourselves wrapped in unusual sensations. Then there was the surprise attack—there can be no other word for it. Given our experiences in the northern part of Fukushima Prefecture, in Shinchimachi in the northernmost part, we should have been prepared for a shocking landscape, but weren’t; we were ambushed.
We did not continue straight on Onahama road but turned off to the right. We were headed toward the docks and the fishing piers. It was immediately clear that this was all reclaimed land, a factory district where all the company names and signs displayed their business of smelting or galvanizing or chemical works. It looked to me exactly the same as the harbor areas of Tokyo, with the same stench (that came to me instinctively, before thought). We saw what we should have known to expect but were still surprised. The tragedy of reclaimed land, now reduced to a liquefied state. This is what happens when a major earthquake attacks a large reclaimed area. Reclaimed areas are built on landfill, so the foundations are rather weak. There was extensive damage, some that was abstract, some following geometrical patterns. For example, the manholes and the manhole covers and the underground conduits attached to them were, here and there, sticking out of the ground. At some places sticking up a few centimeters, at others, ten or twenty. And we found many areas where the sand and the water gushed out together. Clearly, a large expanse of area had been ravaged by high-pressure water shooting out from the depths of the earth, the result of the earthquakes. The entire area was liquefied.
But such ravages. First there was the major earthquake. The four of us in the car, breathless and fearful, made our way along the docks. At one traffic intersection the scene spread before us looked as though the earthquake, in all its self-centered egotism, had no thought but to try its destructive energy and test everything, to see, “Will this shake too?” I felt this scene had been lying in wait for us, to gnaw at our very souls. Ms. S was in the passenger seat; she told young S, who was driving, to turn right toward the shoreline. Dock Number 2. One of the largest aquariums in Tohoku was located there. “Aquamarine Fukushima.” It was still there, but vehicles could not enter. So we joined the handful of cars parked in a line by the side of the road, and stopped the car with Kashiwa license plates. A signboard proclaimed, “The aquarium is temporarily closed today.” A very proper professional signboard. A movable barrier had been placed there to prevent vehicles from entering. It had a handwritten sign attached to it: “Unauthorized persons forbidden entry.”
I knew this already. The aquarium had been temporarily closed since March 11; the work of rescuing the many varieties of fish was ongoing, but the reality of it was exceedingly sad. Authorized aquarium employees still came, struggling hard, never losing hope as they continued their work. T
he large sea animals had been relocated to various aquariums. I wonder what happened to the penguins; I think of them as birds. I stared from the distance at the looming cathedral-like aquarium building. Wondered what had been damaged exactly, and where. The walkway that started off to the side of the “entry forbidden” barrier also showed scars from the earthquake.
“Let’s walk,” I said. To Y, to Ms. S, to young S.
We walked from Dock Number 2 toward Dock Number 1. I would like to insert our conversation here, but the fact is that we hardly exchanged any words. In an e-mail he sent me after we got back to Tokyo, young S called it “temporary aphasia.” In that moment, we could not express even that. We had no means to do so. We had no means, no words, but we looked. Dock Number 1 has a big public building called “Iwaki la la myuu” connected by a pier, a kind of boardwalk. Sections had caved in. The planks from the wooden flooring had been ripped up, the concrete was cracked, broken into pieces, deplorable, caved-in. The tiles and the tile-like material on the walkways had popped up. Plucked by an excessive force and strewn around. Along the back side of the boardwalk were a number of small storehouses, now clearly hollowed out and filled with nothing, clearly announcing: “We stand here empty.” Missing walls, fallen beams and pillars, not a soul around. Over in the Iwaki la la myuu area, to the standholders’ entrance, and to the place that clearly should have had a plate glass window, someone had hastily affixed sheets of plywood, communicating a clear message to me, to all of us: “Off limits.” The boats for tourists were tied up on the western side of the pier, bobbing, bobbing on the surface of the water. That didn’t seem so odd. A little farther on, right at the head of Dock Number 1, stood two big ships, next to each other.
Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure Page 10
