A pause for reflection
I am here in Tokyo today, the tenth anniversary of the Tohoku disaster that struck the northern part of the main island of Honshu on this day 11 March, 2011. A few months ago I thought about travelling to Ishinomaki on the coast of Miyagi Prefecture to be there on this day. But I thought the better of it. One reason is that Tokyo remains under a State of Emergency due to Covid, and although I've been doing some work up in Ishinomaki in recent years, as well as Fukushima with some colleagues, I thought that these places would be crowded with people, media primarily, there to capture the tenth anniversary commemorations. It would seem intrusive to me, given I have no immediate, direct connections with people there.
On the other hand, I know that people I've worked with throughout Tohoku, also do not want the disaster to fade into history and they are grateful when I return, they are grateful when I listen to their stories, while I am actually the one who feels most honoured to share in their generosity.
I was still in Australia in 2011 when news of the disaster reached us. I was working and my mother rang to tell me she had seen news of an earthquake in Japan. I wrote a short reflection about that day, and the first year here here back in 2012. It is interesting to look back on that post now. I did not expect I would be in Japan in 2021; I did not expect I would have been able to contribute, albeit it on a very small scale, to recovery.
After 2011, when I went back to Japan each year on my annual research trip, I hesitated to travel north, for fear of being somewhat of a voyeur, an outsider looking in, and for what? To fulfil an academic curiosity while trying to understand and learn, as far as my discipline of political science was concerned? When I stayed with friends in Tokyo in 2012, 2013, 2014 and again in 2015, I heeded their advice. There will be time to go, just not immediately. There will be time to go and help in the recovery, there will be time. And indeed, this has turned out to be the case. One comment that sticks with me was the one where one person said to me, 'we are thinking 500 years ahead, we want this story to be known in 500 years, and beyond'. Five hundred years from now. It is a long time, but also a brief time, as 2021, ten years on seems to be from that day in 2011.
In retrospect, I made the right decision not to go this week. I wrote about my visit to Ishinomaki in 2018 for a university project here and it is where I would have gone today but I know will go another time, when the spotlight is off the town for the rest of the year and the locals will be pleased that we have not forgotten them. These last few weeks, there have been many programs on tv looking back, looking forward. My eyes and ears are drawn to the Ishinomaki stories. One in particular last week, ten years on, a father continues to go diving almost everyday to search for remains of his daughter, a bank clerk at the time, washed away in the tsunami. Each year on her birthday in December, friends and relatives gather to 'celebrate', to observe. Last December, due to Covid restrictions, it was just her parents. They go to her grave each day to wash her headstone because 'it is just like getting up to wash her face everyday' said her father.
Last week, authorities found the remains of a woman lost in 2011, in Matsushima, not far from Ishinomaki. Her discovery brought the number of people declared dead to 15 900, and those who remain missing, to 2525. Relatives continue to search for the missing.
I first visited the Tohoku region when I was an exchange student at a university in Tokyo. My summer holiday in 1985, before returning to Australia (not knowing when I would return to Japan, but imagining I might) was a long, detailed and planned train journey around Japan, back in the days when basically you were restricted to local or limited express trains. Part 1 of the journey was to head north from Tokyo, by rail, along the coast of Honshu via Fukushima, Sendai, Morioka, and back down the coast, through to Niigata...and onwards. In those days, my Tokyo friends 'warned' me I might struggle with the language in Tohoku since 'they speak a completely different language there you know', half-jesting, half-serious. Indeed, the Tohoku dialect is a strong and distinctive one as I learned on my travels. I momentarily lost confidence in my ability to understand the language I had been living with for almost two years! But the generosity of the locals remains memorable.
I finished the trip, reaching all the way down to Kyushu and back along the coast to Tokyo via Hiroshima, Kyoto and Nagoya, and each town, each place, was special, but the Tohoku region remained particularly memorable. I don't think the railways exist these days for a repeat journey but maybe one day.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As I have taught classes about Japan over the years, one question that comes up time and again is the question of 'anniversary' or 'commemoration'...why do we seem to prioritise those anniversaries ending in '0' over others? The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki come to mind as examples of anniversaries people don't want to see recede into history. Yesterday, 10 March, was the anniversary of mass aerial bombing over Tokyo during World War Two, not as prominent as others but remembered nonetheless. Another thing I have learnt from speaking with people in Ishinomaki is they remember every day. It is important for them and others in the region that we too, do not forget, and that we too, will continue to remember for them and with them, any day of the year.
I will get back to Ishinomaki, soon. It is one place I will return to, time and again.
To my friends, I will remember you today, from Tokyo.
11 March, 2021, 2:46pm.
Photos taken from Hiyoriyama Park, and the Kajimamiko Shrine, atop the hill in Ishinomaki, where many people sought refuge from the tsunami.
