Category: Japan


Along the Tokyo Track

Who knew that such a short story would need 17 years to blossom? It turned out nothing like I imagined, but that’s fitting.

The train sped along the Tokyo track. It blitzed local stations, moving him along, moving him away.

Far away, a world away in New York City, his heart had once grown full. Diminutive as she was demure, she had seen a light in him, and he in her. Half her ancestry originated in Japan. And drawn as he was to the Land of Yamato, he had easily seen in her almond eyes his lineage blending with hers.

They reflected each other, brightening their part of the world.

But it wouldn’t be. Instead, heartache, distance, confusion. Longing for what had been, and for what could have been. Finally, acceptance of what was. Eventually, gratitude.

Their parallel lines diverged, hers arched away, returning her to her family’s origin.

The train picked up speed, glancing side to side. 

Each time he visited this Land, each time he took this trip between Tokyo Station and Narita International, his eyes would scan the trackside apartment blocks, hoping to see her looking back at him from one of one million balconies.

Perhaps, while watering a plant, a woman with a face that he couldn’t forget would glance up at just the right moment, her heart pulled to the passing train for reasons she couldn’t understand.

Perhaps, while airing a futon she shared with another soul and another body, she’d feel a lost, familiar vibration—echoing from the tracks, rippling on the cotton matting—and seek its source.

Perhaps, while hanging out to dry her children’s clothes—children not his own—she’d see one of one million trains that passed by, but this time she’d be unable to look away.

It wouldn’t be, but he, his heart now healed and full, still looked.

The train sped along the Tokyo track.

March was made of yarn

Scattered thoughts in my notebook and marginalia in the above were the only things I’d written of our visit to the coast until now.

In the summer of 2014, we visited Japan and stopped along the coast to see areas affected by the tsunami of 2011. Accompanying us were friends whom we’d thought we’d lost in that very tsunami. Ironic and reassuring at the same time.

What we saw, what we experienced, what we felt … it all made an impression. I can’t see someone sharing a space with such an occurrence — even separated by time — and not feel … well, something. I can only imagine what it was like to look up to see the ocean moving toward you, 125+ feet higher than normal at its peak.

Coming into focus
This is the first I’ve published anything I’ve written about the experience. A few years ago, I read March was Made of Yarn, a collection of literature (and even a manga) about the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011 and related events.

But recently I’ve had occasion to read articles on subject, some pieces coming from the fringe. Stuff like how taxi drivers along the coast report passengers who ask to be take to the coast and then disappear along the way. And others a bit more harrowing.

Another one — altogether grounded in this realm — was a report on tsunami stones, which were places along the coast to warn future generations of past tsunami catastrophes. This was the article that finally spurred me to attempt to share my experiences visiting the coast.

Ayukawa

Building, torn off concrete footings and set on its side, near Ayukawa

Not broken, just incomplete
This post … It’s short, incomplete, as I see it, but that’s fittingly one of the feelings impressed on me along the coast. Once complete, thriving, now … still many years afterward … incomplete, scattered.

To remedy things (at least from a literary angle), I’ll add more. Maybe more to this one, but likely additional posts of a more personal nature.


Aneyoshi’s stonemason

Tamashige’s calloused hands picked up the metal chisel and hammer again. Fresh dust, dry and coarse, blanketed the ground at his feet. Dust – so much dust. So much it formed a pale nimbus around the base of the short stone pillar that was his work today.

Japan 2014 slideshow (170).jpgHe looked at his tools and weary hands, but couldn’t stop. He had to continue. He loosely cradled the tools of his craft for a moment. Then glanced at the stone before looking beyond it, his eyes coming to rest on the ancient mountain laurel still clinging higher up the hillside.

A sigh.

He turned, back toward the resilient shrub, and looked down toward Aneyoshi Town. What was left of it. Its rubble now littered the ground at his feet – broken beams, ceramics, roof tiles, even a fabric doll.

These items didn’t belong here, not on the hillside above the town. They belonged near the bay, not pushed and crushed, scattered by the irresistible, adamant force of a rising sea.

These things didn’t belong here – didn’t deserve to be covered in stone dust. He did. That was his calling. But he couldn’t understand why he still … was. Perhaps it was because he, as the settlement’s stonemason, was the only one who could carve these warning stones, the only one who could ensure the fresh, rough-torn impressions of the tsunami would reach others decades after he was gone.

“Present melts into past,” he murmured to himself, turning back to his work, “and past — that becomes distant memory. Unless it’s carved in stone.”

Future generations would see the stones, and hopefully take heed of their recessed words, which implored readers not to build homes between stone and sea.

Perhaps that was the reason Tamashige, the Aneyoshi stonemason, still lived. Perhaps he could invest his hope in that.