Review: Lloyd Parry, Ghosts of the Tsunami

Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


As it has to be, this is a very sad book. It's at once simple and very complicated. It's about the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami, particularly in the northern region of Japan called Tohoku, and particularly about Okawa Elementary School, where 74 children were killed. It is about literal ghosts, but mostly about figurative ones, and sometimes on the foggy boundary in between, about how the survivors grapple with what happened and what "going on" looks like when you've lost your entire life.

Parry is an insightful and empathetic guide to Japan's customs and culture (this is definitely written with a non-Japanese audience in mind) and how those intersect with bitter grief and anger. He can explain, for example, why it's so shocking that the parents of some of those children brought a lawsuit against the school. And he never loses sight of the fact that there are multiple sides to the story, multiple viewpoints on what the right thing to do is, at both the personal and the social level, and that there isn't one side that's "right." They're all right and they're all at least partly or possibly wrong. That's the complicated part.

The simple part is the overwhelming grief of the parents.

Highly recommended.



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