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

by Richard Lloyd Parry

In the months and years afterward, Takahiro received invitations to give talks around the country to groups interested in the tragedy of Okawa. He accepted out of a sense of duty; he assumed that he would encounter people alert to the human component of disaster, anxious to learn how they themselves could reduce the chances of falling victim to similar catastrophe. “But I was shocked,” he said, “by how low their level of awareness was.” Takahiro’s audiences expressed sympathy and polite horror at what had happened, but it was as if they viewed it through the wrong end of a telescope, as something small, curious, and remote from their own lives. “For them, it was someone else’s problem,” he said. “They didn’t recognize it as the kind of thing that could happen again in the future, even happen to them. Perhaps it’s the same with nuclear power. Everyone played down the dangers for all those years, and the result was this sudden, terrible situation. In Okawa school, too, the teachers played everything down, took nothing seriously.”