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

by Richard Lloyd Parry

The earthquake is the thing that all humans face: the banal inevitability of death. We don’t know when it will come, but we know that it will. We take refuge in elaborate and ingenious precautions, but in the end they are all in vain. We think about it even when we are not thinking about it; after a while, it seems to define what we are. It comes most often for the old, but we feel it most cruelly when it also takes away the young.

My father’s name was Tsutomu Suto. By writing about him, I share his death with others. Perhaps I save him in some way, and perhaps I save myself.”

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.”

As she listened, the character of the woman’s grief changed. It did not diminish. But in time it altered, from a black and suffocating mass to a form bright and crystalline, through which she was able to recognize death, not as the contradiction of life, but as the condition that makes it possible.