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Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone

Richard Lloyd Parry (Goodreads Author)

4.25 · Rating details · 2,597 ratings · 397 reviews

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,500 people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned.

It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis, and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And ...more

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Hardcover, 276 pages

Published August 31st 2017 by Jonathan Cape

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Nov 04, 2017 Lark Benobi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, male-identified-authors

Remarkable reportage from a writer of deep empathy and compassion. It's clear that Parry is very familiar with Japan. There just arent that many non native Japanese speakers who could have conducted these interviews, which must have required such sensitivity and such an appreciation for how language works in Japanese conversation. Parry is also an incredible writer. In addition to chronicling the tsunami and its aftermath he also manages to give non Japanese readers a strong understanding of ...more

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Jan 02, 2020 Libby rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, non-fiction, published-in-2019, audiobook, published-2017, disaster, listened-in-2019

This is a heartbreaking story about the disasters that struck Japan on March 11, 2011. I enjoyed Richard Lloyd Parry’s investigative journalism writing style. He does not shy away from the emotions of grief and loss, even though the Japanese are very reserved.

Richard Lloyd Parry chooses to focus on the tsunami and what happened when small towns along Japan’s coastline were inundated with seawater, the huge loss of life and the psychological impacts of living in the aftermath of such a disaster. This is a heartbreaking story about the disasters that struck Japan on March 11, 2011. I enjoyed Richard Lloyd Parry’s investigative journalism writing style. He does not shy away from the emotions of grief and loss, even though the Japanese are very reserved.

Richard Lloyd Parry chooses to focus on the tsunami and what happened when small towns along Japan’s coastline were inundated with seawater, the huge loss of life and the psychological impacts of living in the aftermath of such a disaster. Parry writes knowledgeably about the tsunami disaster that follows the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, in particular about the Okawa school, where the loss of the lives of school-aged children was unique. As a British foreign correspondent for ‘The Times of London, Parry had lived in Tokyo for many years.

Parry digs into the personal lives of the parents whose children died in the tsunami. Before the tsunami, eleven-year-old Chisato, the youngest daughter of Sayomi Shito, has a dream in which her school is gone, caused by a big earthquake. On March 11th, 2011, Sayomi takes her son, Kenya to the middle school for a graduation ceremony. His school is right across the road from Okawa Elementary School where his sister, Chisato is in class, and when Kenya’s ceremony is over, Sayomi gives some thought to picking her up from school, rather than letting her ride the bus home. At the end of the ceremony, Sayomi says the day had grown cloudy and windless. Sayomi has an intuition that this is an unusual day, but she quells her feelings of unease and doesn’t pick Chisato up from school.

Of the more than 18,000 dead, only 75 of them were children. 74 of them were from the Okawa Elementary School. Parry writes with sensitivity about this tragic event. I have read one review by Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. that compared Parry's style of writing in this book with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, and while I would not go that far, I did find this to be highly readable and the experience of the Japanese parents relatable. They place a great deal of importance on their children and their dreams for their children.

Here is the link to Kelt's review:
https://www.jef.or.jp/journal/pdf/218...

...more

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Apr 12, 2018 Darlene rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake shook Japan; but the earthquake was just the beginning of the natural disaster that would kill 18,500 people that day... the largest loss of life since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The earthquake sent a 120-foot tsunami crashing into the coast of northeast Japan, crushing and drowning people in its path. Ultimately, this tsunami created a massive crisis in Japan when it was discovered that there had also been a meltdown at the On March 11, 2011, an earthquake shook Japan; but the earthquake was just the beginning of the natural disaster that would kill 18,500 people that day... the largest loss of life since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The earthquake sent a 120-foot tsunami crashing into the coast of northeast Japan, crushing and drowning people in its path. Ultimately, this tsunami created a massive crisis in Japan when it was discovered that there had also been a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

In his stunning book, Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone, author and journalist Richard Lloyd Parry, who had been living in Tokyo for some time, begins the book with a recap of his own thoughts and mood while sitting in his office on that March afternoon. The documentation he provides is in the form of emails he sent to various people in his life. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, he seemed unconcerned.. almost nonchalant (at least, at first) which made it clear that his life in Japan left him accustomed to feeling the earth shake from time-to-time. What he and the rest of the world were unaware of at that time was that soon after the earth shook, a tremendous tidal wave was forming that would cause $200 billion in damage and loss of life.

This book is not written as a recap of the destruction that occurred; rather, Mr. Parry chose to focus on one particular swath of coastal land in the northeastern part of Japan, the Tohoku Region. He wrote of his first glimpse of the devastated coastline.... "The scenes along four hundred miles of coast that morning resembled those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, but with water substituted for fire, mud for ash, the stink of fish and ooze for scorched wood and smoke." But what ended up mesmerizing him, he found at the site of the Okawa Elementary School in Fukushima. It was at this school that 74 children and 10 teachers were swallowed up by the tsunami even though it was discovered that there had been ample time to evacuate the children to higher ground. This failure to evacuate became a scandal because questions were never satisfactorily answered by school officials and a lawsuit was filed which created tensions and divisions in the community.Were the officials negligent, incompetent or ill-prepared? But Mr. Parry chose not to focus on obtaining the answers to these questions; rather, he concentrated on the human stories.. the stories of loss and grief experienced by these families.

I found a couple of things captivating about this book. In the past, I have always found that fiction had the power to transport me to other places and times and to experience the lives of other people. I have to say that this true story was rare in that it allowed me to immerse myself in a culture with which I was completely unfamiliar. i read about the families of the children who were lost. I read about the days, weeks and months that went by with grief-stricken parents , tirelessly digging through layers and layers of mud and debris, looking for their children or any scraps of their belongings which might prove to them that their children had been there... that they had existed in more than just their memories. I was moved by their courage but found their calmness and composure in the face of such tragedy and sorrow unnerving. I was startled by their self-control when faced with education officials who had no answers as to why their children had been left to die in the tidal wave. There were a couple of parents who briefly allowed their composure to slip and vented their frustration and anger at officials; but in my mind, I was attempting to construct what such a meeting might look like in the United States. I couldn't help but think about the images from Hurricane Katrina that devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005.. the images of people trapped on their rooftops and stranded in the Super Dome sports complex in New Orleans... the panic, anger and despair that those images portrayed. What I learned from Richard Parry is that, especially in the rural parts of Japan which he refers to as a "symbol of rural tradition", there is often a stubbornly held belief that the PEOPLE are the servants of the state. Perhaps that deeply ingrained belief did not permit parents to really push officials to receive answers to their questions. Perhaps it would have been considered improper. I don't believe I could have maintained my OWN composure under those circumstances but I admit that I found a kind of beauty in the quiet dignity displayed by many of the parents and grandparents. In the United States, of course, we hold the opposite view... public officials are the servants of the PEOPLE!

The other fascinating aspect of the story told by Richard Parry was the amazing number of ghost sightings which occurred in the months after the tsunami (these ghosts are, of course, alluded to in the title of the book). I'm not sure what I believe about ghosts but Mr. Parry provided background and an explanation which ultimately made these ghostly experiences seem a natural consequence of the disaster. Almost immediately, people began describing ghost sightings.... ghosts of family, friends and strangers were seen at home, at workplaces and in public spaces. The earthquake and tsunami seemed to have opened the veil which separates the living from the dead: An old woman appeared at a neighbor's home for tea and the neighbors didn't have the heart to inform her that she had died. A man reported seeing the eyes of deceased strangers in puddles after a rainstorm. Cab drivers reported being asked to deliver fares to non-existent addresses by people who were present in the car one moment but vanished in the next moment. The chief priest at a Buddhist temple, Reverend Kaneda, described the massive number of requests he had received to perform exorcisms.

At first glance, it seemed that Mr. Parry was perhaps describing a kind of old world superstition; but what he was relating was what had been considered the true 'faith' of Japan over the years... the 'cult of the ancestors' or ancestor worship. Although Japanese people often describe themselves as non-religious, according to Mr. Parry, many homes in Japan have household altars on display.These altars (butsudan) hold memorial tablets (ihai) which are constructed of black polished wood and are inscribed with gold. On these altars are offerings of flowers, fruit, drinks and incense. Many Japanese have a kind of contract with their deceased ancestors. The descendants provide gifts of food and prayers and in return, they believe their ancestors will bestow good fortune upon them. There is also the belief that when people die violently or suddenly or in anguish, they are at risk of becoming hungry ghosts (gaki). All of these beliefs are accompanied by rituals; but so many people died in the tsunami and often, the family members who remained were not in a physical or emotional position to carry out the rituals.... many were homeless and grief-stricken. And in some cases, the tsunami left no descendants behind to carry out the rituals for the ancestors. So when thinking about the belief in ancestor worship, it doesn't seem all that surprising or unreasonable to believe that these areas which were leveled by the tsunami and where thousands of people died suddenly and unexpectedly, were also areas inundated with ghosts. I think perhaps it is true that people see and experience what they EXPECT to see and experience. And as religious scholar Herman Ooms writes in reference to Japanese society... "The dead are not as dead there as they are in our own society."

This book isn't one that spends a great deal of time describing the physical devastation of the land and the buildings after the earthquake and tsunami; rather, it is one that compassionately attempts to describe and explain the traditional quiet dignity of rural Japanese villages which sometimes appeared as if they had been lost to the passage of time. Richard Lloyd Parry tells the story of self-possessed people... their trauma, sorrow and their strong connection to all of those who went before them. Highly recommended.

Some images from the Japanese tsunami....

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/japan-tsuna... ...more

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Nov 11, 2018 Peter Boyle rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

The March 2011 earthquake was the biggest ever known to have struck Japan, and the fourth most powerful in the history of seismology. It knocked the earth six and a half inches off its axis and along with the resulting tsunami, caused over $210 billion of damage. Worst of all, it was responsible for the deaths of over 18500 Japanese people, the greatest loss of life in the country since the atomic bombings of 1945.

Richard Lloyd Parry, a British journalist, was working in Tokyo at the time of the The March 2011 earthquake was the biggest ever known to have struck Japan, and the fourth most powerful in the history of seismology. It knocked the earth six and a half inches off its axis and along with the resulting tsunami, caused over $210 billion of damage. Worst of all, it was responsible for the deaths of over 18500 Japanese people, the greatest loss of life in the country since the atomic bombings of 1945.

Richard Lloyd Parry, a British journalist, was working in Tokyo at the time of the quake. In this book he travels to the north-east of the country to meet with survivors who lost loved ones in the disaster. He focuses in particular on the small community of Okawa, where 74 children in the local primary school were killed by the tsunami.

The grief of the affected families is almost unbearable to read about. Their children never came home from a routine day at school and it is impossible for their parents to accept. In many cases, they can't even find the body to bury. One mother, Naomi Hiratsukas, learns to use a digger in the hope that she will one day locate her child among the endless debris. The destruction the wave has caused is staggering to behold. A local worker describes the hellish landscape he encountered in the days after the tsunami: "What stays in my memory is pine trees, and the legs and arms of children sticking out from under the mud and rubbish."

Lloyd Parry writes with such sensitivity and compassion throughout. He talks about his intense, emotional conversations with the parents of the deceased children and at times becomes overwhelmed by their sadness: "Grief was in their noses like a stench; it was the first thing they thought of when they woke in the morning, and the last thing in their minds as they went to sleep at night." He describes his difficulty in reporting the scale of the tragedy: "The events that constituted the disaster were so diverse, and so vast in their implications, that I never felt that I was doing the story justice. It was like a huge and awkwardly shaped package without corners or handles: however many different ways I tried, it was impossible to hoist it off the ground." But he is also brilliant at evoking the sheer force of that terrifying wall of water:

"Something is moving across the landscape as if it is alive, a brown-snouted animal hungrily bounding over the earth. Its head is a scum of splintered debris; entire cars bob along on its back. It seems to steam and smoke as it moves; its body looks less like water or mud than a kind of solid vapour. And then a large boat intact, spinning across the inundated fields with orange flames dancing on their roofs. The creature turns a road into a river, then swallows it whole, and then it is raging over more fields and roads towards a village and a highway thick with cars. One driver is accelerating ahead of it, racing to escape – before the car and its occupants are gobbled up by the wave."

I found Ghosts of the Tsunami a harrowing read. You really feel the grief of the families involved and understand that most of them will never recover from the events of that day. But this is an important book, written with such grace and reverence - it is an insightful, intimate and haunting account of a devastating tragedy. ...more

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Dec 27, 2017 Dianne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: best-of-2018

This is a very good and rather unsettling account of the 2011 tsunami in Japan and its aftermath. The story mainly focuses on the seventy four student deaths at Okawa Elementary school (only four children survived) and what happened to them. The story pulls in so many different threads - personal, social, cultural and political. It's a fascinating and heartbreaking tale.

I am drawn to tsunami stories, especially this particular one. In 2011, I was in an oceanfront condo on the Big Island of This is a very good and rather unsettling account of the 2011 tsunami in Japan and its aftermath. The story mainly focuses on the seventy four student deaths at Okawa Elementary school (only four children survived) and what happened to them. The story pulls in so many different threads - personal, social, cultural and political. It's a fascinating and heartbreaking tale.

I am drawn to tsunami stories, especially this particular one. In 2011, I was in an oceanfront condo on the Big Island of Hawaii with my husband, my sister and her family watching TV when the news came through that a magnitude 9 earthquake had just struck Japan. If you know anything at all about earthquakes and how they are measured, you know that a magnitude 9 earthquake is almost unheard of. The more destructive earthquakes typically have magnitudes between about 5.5 and 8.9; the scale is logarithmic and a difference of one represents an approximate thirtyfold difference in magnitude. In short, a 9 is a nuclear bomb of an earthquake. If you are a frequent visitor to the Hawaiian Islands, you know to pay very close attention to earthquakes in the Pacific basin. We immediately started packing and sure enough, 30 minutes later the tsunami sirens started up. We had plenty of time to clear out - the waves would take hours to arrive - but it was terrifying nonetheless. We spent the night in our rental car in a shopping mall parking lot with hundreds of other people while we waited for the tsunami to arrive. It would arrive in the dark, in the early dawn hours, and there was nothing we could do but sit in the car, washed out in eerie sodium lights, and listen to the sirens wail. When we were finally allowed back into the tsunami zones the next afternoon, we were deeply relieved to find the condo had been completely spared, but other places on the Big Island were not so lucky. There are places (e.g. Kona Village resort) that were so devastated that they have never reopened. Nevertheless, the scope of damage was miniscule compared to what happened to Japan. More than 18,000 people died in Japan - crushed, burned to death or drowned, per the author - with many never recovered. To this day, artifacts from the Japan tsunami wash up on Hawaiian beaches. Very eerie.

So anyway - there's my slim thread of personal attachment to that event and the source of my subsequent obsession. I have since watched many videos of the Japanese tsunami, spellbound by the sight of the ocean waves turning into something unrecognizable. Lloyd Parry describes it so very well:

"The tsunami was a thing of a different order, darker, stranger, massively more powerful and violent, without kindness or cruelty, beauty or ugliness, wholly alien. It was the sea coming onto land, the ocean itself picking up its feet and charging at you with a roar in its throat.

It stank of brine, mud and seaweed. Most disturbing of all were the sounds it generated as it collided with, and digested, the stuff of the human world: the crunch and squeal of wood and concrete, metal and tile. In places, a mysterious dust billowed above it, like the cloud of pulverized matter that floats above a demolished building. It was as if neighborhoods, villages, whole towns were being placed inside the jaws of a giant compressor and crushed."

"Ghosts of the Tsunami" is delivered in a rather "journalistic" manner, by which I mean that the author's style is somewhat removed and detached, and he is reporting the facts of what happened. For me, it lost some emotional impact being told in that fashion. Lloyd Parry is, in fact, an editor and Tokyo bureau chief of the London Times, so it makes sense that his reporter chops are showing. This book is very well written and meticulously researched. I highly recommend it.

On a side note, if you are interested in tsunamis and the human toll of their devastation, I also recommend Sonali Deraniyagala's "Wave." Deraniyagala lost her entire family in the Christmas Day 2004 tsunami in Indonesia. Devastating and unforgettable. ...more

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Dec 13, 2019 Paltia rated it it was amazing

Incredibly moving telling of the 2011 earthquake that sent a 120 foot tsunami over the northeast coast of Japan. Parry’s writing brings the events and people to life with all the anxieties, despair, anger and sorrow imaginable. I found the Reverend Taio Kaneta’s description of his experiences poignant and profoundly spiritual. Here is an example of his thoughts - “We realised that, for all we’d learned about religious ritual and language, none of it was effective in facing what we saw all around ...more

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Dec 06, 2018 Tony added it

Shelves: science-nature, japanese

These are the rough facts:

It was the biggest earthquake ever known to have struck Japan, and the fourth most powerful in the history of seismology. It knocked the Earth ten inches off its axis; it moved Japan four feet closer to America. In the tsunami that followed, 18,500 people were drowned, burned, or crushed to death. At its peak, the water was 120 feet high. Half a million people were driven out of their homes. Three reactors in the Fukushima Dai-ichi power station melted down, spilling These are the rough facts:

It was the biggest earthquake ever known to have struck Japan, and the fourth most powerful in the history of seismology. It knocked the Earth ten inches off its axis; it moved Japan four feet closer to America. In the tsunami that followed, 18,500 people were drowned, burned, or crushed to death. At its peak, the water was 120 feet high. Half a million people were driven out of their homes. Three reactors in the Fukushima Dai-ichi power station melted down, spilling their radioactivity across the countryside, the world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. The earthquake and tsunami caused more than $210 billion of damage, making it the most costly natural disaster ever.

If you wanted - and how could you not want - to actually see what happened, there is plenty of YouTube video showing this mass, which is both slow and fast simultaneously, crumbling buildings like so many sand castles. So inexorable is it that you want to yell at the cameraman to get the hell away.

This book attempts to put faces to the moment, and to the subsequent grief. It also purports to expose how Japanese culture is imbued in the institutions which treat disasters.

Richard Parry follows the aftermath. A mother learns to operate a backhoe and searches for years for her missing daughter. Other survivors search through the legal system, public meetings, psychics and priests.

It's a compelling story, if limited by a journalistic template. Notepad in hand, some people will talk to you and others will tell you to go to hell. Truth is not only found in the spoken word. But when a Buddhist priest puts on a Thelonious Monk CD, and begins to reflect, it is wise to listen:

"We realized that, for all we had learned about religious ritual and language, none of it was effective in facing what we saw all around us. This destruction that we were living inside--it couldn't be framed by the principle and theories of religion. Even as priests, we were close to the fear that people express when they say, 'We see no God, we see no Buddha here.' I realized then that the religious language was an armor that we wore to protect ourselves, and that the only way forward was to take it off."

...more

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Jan 17, 2019 Yun rated it liked it · review of another edition

Ghosts of the Tsunami is the tale of the human toll that resulted from the powerful 2011 earthquake that rocked Japan and the subsequent tsunami that killed thousands of people. It is told through the eyes of a small town in northern Japan, with a focus on its elementary school and the mystery of what happened there that led to the deaths of 74 students and 10 teachers, when safety was only a few steps away.

I found the story surrounding the elementary school to be fascinating. Parry's writing ...more

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May 30, 2018 Rebecca rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-via-netgalley, history, true-crime, best-of-2017, folio-prize-winner

Eighteen and a half thousand people died in the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011. It’s not really possible to get one’s head around a tragedy on that scale so, wisely, Parry focuses on a smaller story within the story. Seventy-four children died at Okawa primary school because the administration didn’t have a sufficient disaster plan in place. Instead of leading the children up the hill above the school, the teachers took them down the road to a roundabout and they were all Eighteen and a half thousand people died in the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011. It’s not really possible to get one’s head around a tragedy on that scale so, wisely, Parry focuses on a smaller story within the story. Seventy-four children died at Okawa primary school because the administration didn’t have a sufficient disaster plan in place. Instead of leading the children up the hill above the school, the teachers took them down the road to a roundabout and they were all soon washed away. Years later the parents of the dead children would bring a lawsuit against the school board, accusing it of negligence. A community that had at first been united in suffering while searching for corpses started to splinter apart: the parents of the dead resented the parents of the handful of survivors, and there were disagreements about the lawsuit. Standing up and shouting insults at officials during public hearings didn’t fit the stereotype of Japanese dignity and reserve, but desperation overruled all other concerns.

Like Wave, this is almost unbearably sad, but amid the overwhelming sense of loss the fragments of individual stories shine through: The mother who got a digger license so she could spend part of every day sifting through rubble for her daughter’s remains, the centenarian athlete who survived decades of life’s assaults only to be swept away in the tsunami, the bureaucrat who very nearly drowned but lived to tell the tale, the Zen Buddhist priest who was called on to perform many an exorcism. Japan is not a very religious country but, as Parry explains, its true religion may well be ancestor reverence, and with so many unsettled ghosts around after the disaster, a whole nation had to decide how to do right by the dead. You can be as skeptical as you like, but it’s hard to ignore these accounts of ghosts.

Parry, a long-time resident of Japan, was at work in Tokyo on the day the earthquake hit. The quake and its aftershocks, though serious, didn’t hit the city very hard, so it took a while for it to become clear just what the extent of the damage was elsewhere in the country. He spent six years researching and writing this book. It’s a stunning portrait of a resilient people, but it’s also a more universal story of the human spirit facing the absolute worst.

Favorite passages:

“this was the best of Japan, the best of humanity, one of the things I loved and admired most about this country: the practical, unsensational, irrepressible strength of communities.”

“There is no tidying away of loose ends to be done in a story about the deaths of young children, about the annihilation of a coast—only more stories to be told, and retold in different ways, and tested like radioactive material for the different kinds of meaning they give out. Stories alone show the way.” ...more

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Nov 10, 2017 Ammar rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2017

One of the best reads of 2017. The author who is a journalist who lives in Japan, and who lived there during the Tsunami and the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima. The book deals with the Tsunami. It brings various lives of victims, and their families and how they survived during the Tsunami and in its aftermath.

We readers go into the depth of the Japanese family, who is usually reserved and does not open up to strangers, and we get a rare glimpse into their psyche.

We read about bereaved parents, ...more

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Jul 26, 2019 Jill Hutchinson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: world-history, non-fiction

What better author to write about this unthinkable tragedy than Parry......a London news correspondent who has lived most of his adult life in Japan and because of his deep understanding of the Japanese culture, could delve into the feelings and responses of the people who survived this horror.

On March 11, 2011, following a number of earthquakes (an almost monthly occurrence in Japan) , a 125 foot tsunami struck the north east coast of Japan, taking with it 18,500 lives. The author concentrates ...more

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Sep 22, 2017 Kathleen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

My review for the Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifesty...

In sheer scope, certain natural disasters outstrip all quantitative efforts to describe them. Undoubtedly, the data on the Tohoku earthquake can help to express the vastness of the catastrophe: On March 11, 2011, the most powerful earthquake recorded in Japan — 9.1 on the Richter scale — occurred 20 miles beneath the sea about 250 miles from Tokyo. The quake triggered a 120-foot tsunami that devoured the coast of My review for the Chicago Tribune:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifesty...

In sheer scope, certain natural disasters outstrip all quantitative efforts to describe them. Undoubtedly, the data on the Tohoku earthquake can help to express the vastness of the catastrophe: On March 11, 2011, the most powerful earthquake recorded in Japan — 9.1 on the Richter scale — occurred 20 miles beneath the sea about 250 miles from Tokyo. The quake triggered a 120-foot tsunami that devoured the coast of northeast Japan, killing more than 18,000 people and causing Level 7 meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Past a certain point, though, such figures defy comprehension, and a more narrative and personalized approach is required to achieve real understanding of the human, environmental and monetary costs. Fortunately, Richard Lloyd Parry’s remarkably written and reported “Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone” provides such an account of the Great East Japan Earthquake, which caused “the greatest single loss of life in Japan since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945.”

A British author and an award-winning journalist who has lived in Tokyo since 1995 where he works as the Asia editor of The Times of London, Parry is the author of two previous books of nonfiction, including 2007’s “In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos” and 2012’s true crime tale “People Who Eat Darkness” about the disappearance and murder of Lucie Blackman in Tokyo.

No stranger to covering distress and calamity, he turns his lucid journalistic gaze — as well as his mastery of plot and character — here on the events of that fatal March day. He mentions Fukushima, but concentrates on the tsunami itself, wisely finding an “exceptional tragedy” within the greater morass to give shape to what might otherwise remain overwhelming. Parry hones in on the Okawa Primary School, which — despite its frequent disaster preparedness drills and a 700-foot-tall hill behind the building — lost 74 of its 108 students and 10 of its 13 teachers and staff.

In a gripping fashion, Parry builds his account around solving the excruciating mystery that haunts the parents of those who were killed: “the earthquake had struck at 2:46 p.m. The hands of the school clock were frozen at 3:37 p.m., when the building’s electricity was quenched by the rising water. This was the central question of the Okawa tragedy: What exactly happened between the first event and the second? What was going on … for the last fifty-one minutes of its existence?”

In doing so, he produces a page-turner. In lesser hands, this tactic could seem ghoulish or exploitative — “an effort to squeeze spooky entertainment out of the tragedy.” But in Parry’s, the material gets assembled into a moving study of character and culture, love and loss, grief and responsibility.

Parry studs the story with gems of language and detail, like how in the remote part of the countryside worst hit by the wave, the local brand of rice is called “Love at First Sight,” and how in Japan, people rarely say sayonara as Westerners think, but more often use the phrase itte kimasu, “which means literally, ‘Having gone, I will come back,’ ” a grimly ironic turn of phrase, considering how many people never did.

He constructs the book as an exquisite series of nesting boxes of sorrow and compassion, giving readers the tale within the tale of Naomi, who becomes so determined to extract her daughter’s corpse from the ruins that she attends “a week-long course at a training center near Sendai” where “all the other participants were men” in order to earn her license to operate earth-moving equipment to up her chances of achieving her aim.

Reminiscent of John Hersey’s classic “Hiroshima,” a devastatingly calm and matter-of-fact look at the dropping of the world’s first atomic bomb, Parry recounts this story with a necessary balance of detachment and investment. Significantly, unlike Hersey, Parry was in Japan during the disaster he’s describing, and so he includes the occasional first-person experience in his multilayered account.

The result is a spellbinding book that is well worth contemplating in an era marked by climate change and natural disaster. ...more

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Sep 19, 2017 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

You can tell the years of research that went into this heartbreaking book. One of the saddest and most maddening things I've ever read. Highly recommended.

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Sep 07, 2019 Karmologyclinic rated it it was amazing

Shelves: not-fiction, audio-books, japanophile

A book about the tsunami becomes a study in grief, loss and humanity and delves into the supernatural as a coping mechanism. I cried a lot.

[...] we try to unthaw the frozen future [...]

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Nov 24, 2017 GoldGato rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: catastrophe, winter, non-fiction, library-checkout, asia

March 11, 2011. It was a Friday and for some reason, I turned on the telly and became entranced by the footage of the Black Wave which seemed to be engulfing the east coast of Japan. It didn't seem to be real, rolling along determinedly and swallowing everything in its path. I immediately texted a co-worker to see if her family in Japan was okay, but like everyone else, all I could do was watch as cars vainly tried to outrun the implacable monster. In Japanese, "hell" is jigoku.

This book looks ...more

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Jan 26, 2018 Katia N rated it it was amazing

Tsunami has struck Japan on March 11, 2011 and took away the lives of more than 18,000 people. Almost half of them were the old and vulnerable. However, only around 4% were children under 15. It is a relatively small proportion which indicates the Japanese in general took seriously the wellbeing of their young ones. But 74 of these deaths took place just in a single school - Okawa elementary. In this book Richard Lloyd Parry gives the account how and why this happened.

But it is so much more than ...more

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Mar 05, 2018 Christine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: natural-and-unnatural-disasters, history-japan

Good, powerful reporting.

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Jan 09, 2020 Colin rated it it was amazing

Absolutely amazing book, this. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's an examination of the effects of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, seen through the lens of a single school, Okawa Primary School, where, through failures of planning and initiative, a large percentage of the children and almost all the teachers died. It's pretty harrowing of course, not so much for the scale of the tragedy, which is pretty familiar by now, but for the accounts of individuals, mainly bereaved parents. There ...more

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Sep 27, 2019 Denise rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2019, own

The March 11, 2011, Tohoku earthquake and tsunami - the deadliest event in Japan since the atomic bomb that devastated Nagasaki - caused an immense and scarcely imaginable number of tragedies, taking the lives of more than 18,000 people. In this powerful, meticulously researched account of the disaster and its aftermath, Parry focusses in large part on one such particular tragedy, that of the Okawa Elementary School, where 74 children and 10 teachers were killed by the tsunami - in spite of the ...more

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Apr 01, 2019 Conor Ahern rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, book-club, japanese

"Ghosts of the Tsunami" chronicles the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami. The fifth most powerful earthquake ever recorded killed a handful of people in seismically prepared Japan, but the water it dislodged wreaked unprecedented catastrophe, killing tens of thousands more.

While many communities on the east coast of Japan were devastated, a particular rural community had an entire generation of its children wiped out in a tragedy this book attempts to encircle. "Ghosts" is as much a compendium of ...more

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Sep 09, 2017 Andrea rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Andrea by: Tracey Allen at Carpe Librum

Shelves: non-fiction, city-library, around-the-world-2018

Fabulous book, but gut-wrenching at the same time.

Journalist Richard Lloyd Parry has lived in Japan for many, many years. He's experienced many earthquakes and tremors from his base in Tokyo, so when a cluster began in early March 2011 he didn't think much of it - ducking underneath his desk every now and then, and straightening the occasional picture frame. It was the same in the region of Tohoku, in the north-eastern part of Honshu, until the big quake came on March 11, followed by the ...more

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Nov 26, 2017 Kathleen rated it really liked it

British journalist Parry was living in Tokyo when the 9.1 earthquake off the coast of northeast Japan took place in March of 2011. Earthquakes are frequent occurrences in Japan, so the country’s response was blasé at first. The initial tsunami warnings were also discounted—certainly there was no chance that a tsunami would advance two and half miles inland to reach the Okawa primary school. But, it did. The elders of the village did not believe such a tsunami was possible. The result was a ...more

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Apr 04, 2018 Kolumbina rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Wow! What a book! And non-fiction!!!
An outstanding book written by a very mature writer/foreign corespondent about a very powerful earthquake in Japan in 2011 followed by tsunami. The story is concentrated on Okawa school where at the time of disaster more than 70 school children and 11 teachers died/disappeared.
Richard Lloyd Parry did a fantastic job, obviously he knows and understands Japan, Japanese culture, habits, traditions, emotions, religion, ...
A very rich book, very emotional, ...more

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Jun 19, 2019 Nancy rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019

#20BooksOfSummer
Finished: 19.06.2019
Genre: non-fiction
Rating: B
Conclusion:

Impressive piece of investigative journalism
about the human side of the March 11 2011 Tsunami.
Parry centers the narrative around the tragic loss of life at
a small primary school.
Lives are torn apart by grief and anger.
Personal accounts are pieced together
through interviews with
survivors after a tsunami as high as a 11 story building
crushed the village of Okawa.
One man describes what it was like to be in the
tsunami ...more

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Dec 18, 2019 Adam rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, journalism, japan

Well-researched and compelling. The author is a journalist and long time resident of Japan. “Ghosts of the Tsunami” endeavors to come to terms with the events of 3/11/2011, an earthquake and tsunami that killed around 20,000 people, from a human perspective. It focuses on the community around the Okawa elementary school in Miyagi Prefecture, where 74 students and 10 teachers were lost to the tsunami. It’s a sad and moving portrait of a particular region of northern Japan, based on the author’s ...more

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Feb 15, 2018 Linda Lipko rated it it was amazing

High up on my list of one of the best I've read thus far this year, this captivating, well-written book pulled me in from the first page.

March 11, 2011 was a day of incredible disaster for Japan. In particular, the hardest hit were the Northern reaches which are comprised of small hamlets of hard-working people who live off the land. Near the epicenter, and the hardest hit by after shocks and 30-foot tsunami waves and walls of crushing danger, everything seemed to happen so very quickly.

In High up on my list of one of the best I've read thus far this year, this captivating, well-written book pulled me in from the first page.

March 11, 2011 was a day of incredible disaster for Japan. In particular, the hardest hit were the Northern reaches which are comprised of small hamlets of hard-working people who live off the land. Near the epicenter, and the hardest hit by after shocks and 30-foot tsunami waves and walls of crushing danger, everything seemed to happen so very quickly.

In Tokyo, 125 miles away from the epicenter, initially, a strong tremor was felt. Earth quakes are a common occurrence, and thus at first some thought it was no big deal. But others knew by the strength of the quake that this was something to be reckoned with. Those in underground transportation stations were very aware, and afraid that the ceiling had the potential of falling on them.

As skyscrapers swayed and buildings cracked, the earthquake measured a solid 9.0 of the Richter scale. Soon, followed by this roughly five minute solid tremor, a tsunami was predicted. Japan is located on four highly active tectonic plates. Yet, because they feared dependence on other countries for oil, they built nuclear power plants. Warned that this was not a wise undertaking given the daily shocks from the underground, still, they built 54 plants.

Four of the nuclear power plants nearest the center of the quake closed, The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was the most impacted and the core failed.

After shocks measured a consistent 7 on the Richter scale, and soon after the major first five-minute tremor, a tsunami warning went out .

This book focuses on a small school in the Northern area. The was Okawa Elementary School branched out to many children living in small hamlets or villages. When the tremor was first felt, the teachers made the children duck and cover. Then, herding the children to the playground, they unwisely waited. A few parents drove through the winding roads to get their children. They witnessed buses running, but no children were boarding.

Approximately one hour after the first quake, the tsunami rapidly enveloped roads, huge pine trees and walls of 30 feet of black water rapidly engulfed everything and everyone in its path. For unknown reasons, the teachers did not move the children to higher ground. There was a large hill within distance, and if told, the children could have run up that hill. One teacher did. He lived. Later, he would be the scorn and hate of all parents who lost their beloved child or children.

There were 78 children, of which 74 died. There were eleven teachers, of which ten died. Sadly, dramatically, this was the lone school in all of Japan to suffer such overwhelming death. Later, as the author notes, angry parents demanded a reckoning. When they learned that in fact some of the children asked the teachers if they could run up higher, the anger of parents was white hot!

The author writes vividly about the emotional pain of parents who spent every waking moment digging and looking for their children. Piles and piles of bodies, and yet some of the parents still could not find their child.

Highly Recommended.

Five Stars! ...more

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Oct 10, 2017 Kirsti rated it it was amazing

Ok, such is reading these days that I started two other books but was drawn to reading this one on my Kindle instead. I had waited eagerly for it after requesting the book on Netgalley, but then it was archived and I thought I must have missed out until I got the joyful email I've come to love! Books <3

Like many others, I watched with fascinated horror as first and Earthquake, then Tsunami, swept through Japan in 2011. That is, I watched from the safety of my living room, with no conception Ok, such is reading these days that I started two other books but was drawn to reading this one on my Kindle instead. I had waited eagerly for it after requesting the book on Netgalley, but then it was archived and I thought I must have missed out until I got the joyful email I've come to love! Books <3

Like many others, I watched with fascinated horror as first and Earthquake, then Tsunami, swept through Japan in 2011. That is, I watched from the safety of my living room, with no conception of the true disasters that day. Media rattle off figures and statistics; Richard takes us into the homes of the victims.

Okawa school is the focus of this book, as well as the 74 children who died there. Gathered from interviewing both the survivors and relatives as well as other people in the community, we get a real sense of who these children were, who they were going to be. However, despite warnings from parents and officials patrolling the area, and perhaps even from the children themselves, the teachers decided to wait and see, and then evacuated them to a more dangerous area. They had no real plan in place for a Tsunami specifically.

What we get here is a real glimpse at Japanese culture, especially illuminating because it is written by a foreigner who is living in Japan. He can't understand all the attitudes towards different things, but faithfully narrates them anyway. The writing remains an investigation, even as some of the stories become more personal and we as readers get more involved. There are depictions of death and grief, and even discussion of ghosts unable to move on.

Although this was focused on one small area of the disaster zone and really is just a glimpse of the events there, I felt like this was a powerful story that needed to be told. As I said, I put aside two other books just to finish this instead, because once I started I need to know more.

I think this book will appeal to the history buffs, but also to those who read strongly emotional stories that include both fact and account. I enjoyed the writing very much, and am glad I know more about this disaster now. Five stars. ...more

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May 28, 2018 Bridget rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018

Some books are interesting mostly because of their subject matter - they might be indifferently written but they are gripping solely by virtue of the story they are recounting.

This book, about the 2011 tsunami in Japan, is about something inherently fascinating...and somehow elevates it. It is better and more interesting than it should be, even though by default it should be quite good just based on the subject matter. It's about the tsunami, but also Japan, Japanese culture, Japanese religion, ...more

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Jan 05, 2019 Valerie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world-nonfiction, politics-history-and-society

This is a powerful book about the massive earthquake and tsunami which hit the northeastern coastline of Japan in March 2011. It doesn’t so much recount the events of that fateful day, but instead focuses on the impact it has had on the victims and local communities and how they have dealt with the trauma. It centres in particular on the tragedy at Okawa Primary School, where 84 pupils and teachers perished. While this means the book doesn’t reflect the full scale of the events – over 18,000 ...more

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Nov 12, 2018 Katherine Addison rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century, survival

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 ...more

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About Richard Lloyd Parry

Richard Lloyd Parry

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Richard Lloyd Parry was born in north-west England, and has lived since 1995 in Tokyo, where he is the Asia Editor of The Times newspaper of London. He has reported from twenty-eight countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea. In 2005, he was named the UK's foreign correspondent of the year. He has also written for Granta, the New York Times and the London Review of Books.

Books by Richard Lloyd Parry

People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo--and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up

In the Time of Madness: Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos

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“I asked him what kind of consolation a priest could offer to people such as the parents of Okawa school, and he was quiet for a moment. “You have to be careful,” he said. “You have to be very careful in doing this to people who have lost their children. It takes long months, long years—it might take a whole lifetime. It might be the very last thing that you say to someone. But perhaps all that we can tell them in the end is to accept. The task of acceptance is very hard. It’s up to every single person, individually. People of religion can play only a part in achieving that—they need the support of everyone around them. We watch them, watch over them. We remember our place in the cosmos, as we work. We stay with them, and we walk together. That’s all we can do.” — 3 likes

“Most of the parents who came to the school were full-time mothers and housewives; most of the villagers offering their opinions were retired, elderly and male. It was another enactment of the ancient dialogue, its lines written centuries ago, between the entreating voices of women, and the oblivious, overbearing dismissiveness of old men.” — 3 likes

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