Friday, March 11, 2011

Disaster in Japan

This morning I awoke to the ring of my cell phone, Josiah calling to make sure that I had heard the news: Japan had been hit by a massive earthquake, magnitude 8.9, the largest earthquake in their recorded history. My mind, somewhere in REM sleep only a minute earlier, snapped into gear. Josiah and I spent the summer of 2008 to the summer of 2010 living and teaching in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan--only two prefectures south of Miyagi Prefecture, where the devastation had been most concentrated.

I opened my web browser to BBC News and turned the t.v. on to CNN. I scanned Facebook for updates from any of my friends who are in Japan. One friend had changed his status to say that he was okay, just without water or electricity. This was reassuring. But the video clips flashing across my parents' high definition television screen provided less comfort. Image after image of great walls of sea water rushing forward to take out entire towns, businessmen stumbling about swaying office buildings, people running terrified out of their homes. But never a word as to where these videos were captured. In Miyagi? In Tokyo? It was several hours before I was able to get in touch with friends in Tochigi and get an idea of what the situation was like in my once-hometown of Moka.

In Tochigi, people were scared, but fine. Many spent almost a day shivering in their homes without water or electricity, but hardly anyone--as far as reports have shown--has been seriously injured. Tochigi prefecture is completely landlocked, far enough inland that tsunamis do not pose a threat and--as anyone who has been following the news today is now well aware--buildings in Japan are specifically engineered to withstand violent earthquakes, so the damage to homes in and around Moka has been relatively minimal. I heard a report that a friend's parents' roof was significantly damaged, but her parents, physically, are fine. They are fine!

But my joy at knowing my own friends have been spared is put on hold in the face of the devastation that has taken place in the coastal prefectures to the north of them. Japan is my second home. It is part of who I am now. I am reminded poignantly of the truism that inviting others into our lives means sharing not only their deepest joys, but also their most painful sorrows. As the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz empirically reasons, "Now I know I've got a heart, 'cause it's breaking." If I had any doubt before as to how significantly my time in Japan had impacted me personally, it has been wiped out of my mind by the aching of my heart as I watch the tragedy unfold on the news.

I was deeply impressed by a certain video clip that they have been repeatedly showing in the mainstream television coverage of the story. On t.v., they only show a small portion of the video, but a longer version is available on Youtube. We watch as, in a supermarket, workers forgo running to safety in order to help one another hold the wine shelf in place and to rescue some of the store's most valuable merchandise.

The video reminds me, first of all, of how shocked I was when I first felt (what I then considered to be) a big earthquake in Japan: I momentarily "freaked out" and looked for a place to duck and cover; but, in looking around, realized that everyone else in the room was ignoring the quake altogether! It occurred to me then that earthquakes were so much a routine part of life in Japan that it was not worth it to even acknowledge the relatively small ones.

But, even more than that, these video images remind me of the pervasive sense of "team" that runs throughout Japanese culture. Americans working in an American supermarket during a natural disaster would sooner be concerned with protecting themselves than protecting the merchandise of their employer, I think. (And here the American side of me wants to chip in, "And rightfully so!" But the veteran gaijin side of me sympathizes with a mindset in which duty always comes before self.)

The hardships that Japan and its people face today and will continue to face in the months to come are unimaginable, but I know that this culturally embedded sense of dedication to the group over the individual will play a vital role in their rehabilitation. Somewhere, several months from now, healing will happen. But today, my heart aches alongside hearts in Japan and throughout the world. Please, now, as you finish reading this, pray for Japan.

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