After disaster: my personal essay 7 years after Japan's tsunami ("Ghosts of the Tsunami")
After Disaster: Embracing a Living Past through “Ghosts of the Tsunami” (Words Without Borders)
I flew out of Tokyo two days before March 11. There was a mild tremor as I packed, causing the overhead lamp in my kitchen to sway. I crouched over my suitcase, arms extended in my usual high-alert stance, but the earth soon resettled and I went back to folding my socks. Mild side-to-side rocking and the occasional vertical jolt are standard stuff in Japan, the most earthquake prone country in the world.
During the days of the disaster and its immediate aftermath, I was in Oregon and California, giving university lectures and an NPR interview about, of all things, Japan’s obsession with apocalypse in its art and popular culture. I would not have remembered that tremor on the ninth had it not been for what happened on the eleventh.
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I flew out of Tokyo two days before March 11. There was a mild tremor as I packed, causing the overhead lamp in my kitchen to sway. I crouched over my suitcase, arms extended in my usual high-alert stance, but the earth soon resettled and I went back to folding my socks. Mild side-to-side rocking and the occasional vertical jolt are standard stuff in Japan, the most earthquake prone country in the world.
During the days of the disaster and its immediate aftermath, I was in Oregon and California, giving university lectures and an NPR interview about, of all things, Japan’s obsession with apocalypse in its art and popular culture. I would not have remembered that tremor on the ninth had it not been for what happened on the eleventh.
Read More >>
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