Ghosts of the Tsunami_Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry

Author:Richard Lloyd Parry [Parry, Richard Lloyd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Asia, Japan, Social Science, Disasters & Disaster Relief
ISBN: 9780374253974
Google: jWs6DgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0374253978
Publisher: MCD
Published: 2017-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

The River of Three Crossings

Tetsuya Tadano came to on the hill, blinded by mud and with the roar of the tsunami in his ears. His limbs were immobilised by spars of debris and by something else, something wriggling and alive, which was shifting its weight on top of him. It was Kohei Takahashi, Tetsuya’s friend and fifth-year classmate. Kohei’s life had been saved by a household refrigerator. It had floated past with its door open as he thrashed in the water, and he had squirmed into it, ridden it like a boat and been dumped by it on his schoolmate’s back. ‘Help! I’m underneath you,’ Tetsuya cried. Kohei tugged him free. Standing on the steep slope, the two boys beheld the scene below.

Tetsuya’s first thought was that he and his friend were already dead. He took the raging water to be the River of Three Crossings, the Japanese equivalent of the River Styx. Those who have led good lives cross the river safely by bridge; evil-doers must take their chances in the dragon-ridden waters. Innocent children, being neither sinful nor virtuous, rely on a kindly Buddha to make their passage, and to protect them from the depredations of hags and demons.

‘I thought I’d died,’ Tetsuya said. ‘Dead … the River of Three Crossings. But then there was the New Kitakami Great Bridge, and the traffic island. And so I thought this might be Kamaya after all.’

The water, which had receded, began to surge up the hill again. The two boys tottered up the slope. Tetsuya’s face was black and bruised. In the churn of the tsunami, the ill-fitting plastic helmet that he wore had twisted on its strap and dug brutally against his eyes. His vision was affected for weeks; he could make out only dimly what was going on in the water below.

Kohei’s left wrist was broken and his skin was punctured by thorns, but his vision was unaffected. Whatever was visible of the fate of his school and his schoolmates, he saw it. He would never talk publicly about it.

Tetsuya became aware that an expression of glazed sleepiness was passing over Kohei’s face. ‘Hang on, I thought – that’s dangerous,’ Tetsuya said. ‘I can’t have him saving me, then dying on me.’ But his friend was becoming more and more detached from the here and now. Tetsuya’s mind, too, began to drift and wander. He struggled even to remember what day it was. His little sister had been in the schoolyard too; his mother, who had disappeared on her vague errand, must be out there somewhere. He thought of the soldiers of the Japan Self-Defence Forces: surely by now they must be on their way. He called out to the soldiers: Help! Help! ‘But they didn’t come,’ Tetsuya remembered. ‘And while I was thinking about all these things, Kohei had fallen asleep.’

With their loudspeakers blaring evacuation warnings, Toshinobu Oikawa and his colleagues from the town office had raced out of Kamaya and up to the traffic island opposite the Great Bridge.

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