Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (3 page)

All these towns had a beach. Whenever we visited the beach, my mother would ask, “What do you do if the water suddenly disappears?”

“Run,” I would answer.

“Why?” she would fire back.

As I got older, this questioning became annoying. Born in Japan, my mother had trained to be an opera singer in Europe, where she met my father, an American. Both had a tendency to behave as though they were on a stage. Sometimes I got to be on stage with them. Sometimes I was the audience. It made it tricky to know what to take seriously.

“Come on. Why?” she’d press.

“Because it means a tsunami is coming,” I’d sigh.

Whatever that was.

A
FTER THIRTY-SIX HOURS
, my mother got through to the “temple”—this is how we refer to our relatives. “Marie, I spoke to the temple. Ry
ko answered the phone.” The temple comprises a family of five. Semp
, the head priest, is my mother’s cousin. He is married to Ry
ko, and together they have three boys, whom I will call Daisuke, Takahagi, and Masa. Daisuke is the oldest and Masa the youngest.

Ry
ko, a tiny and attractive woman with a round mouth and large eyes, is an efficient person, accustomed to making sure the four men in her family make all their appointments on time, wear clean clothing, and eat the excellent meals she cooks. Ry
ko is vintage T
hoku in that beneath her practical exterior are glittering flashes of good humor, like bubbles in a glass of champagne. She cuts an elegantly trim figure in the kimonos she wears to the numerous funeral services conducted at the temple, which are the main source of her family’s income. She is equally, or perhaps even more, at home in a
sunakku
, or pub, trading jokes with locals, her slim hand holding a beer aloft.

Ry
ko explained that the earthquake had not caused any major damage to the temple’s structure or, more importantly, to any of the tombstones. Everyone was unharmed. My mother hung up.

Not long after, we learned that a new monster was now awake in T
hoku: radiation. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was just thirty miles from Iwaki. Over the next thirty-six hours, news coverage shifted to the unfolding disaster: one reactor had been damaged by the waves and was on fire, the wind scattering invisible, destructive particles. In some parts of T
hoku it was snowing, and I imagined the radiation camouflaging itself with snowflakes, so beautiful, but so deadly.

Nearby towns had been evacuated, but not Iwaki because it was on the outer edge of what the government deemed to be safe territory. We managed again to get through to the temple on the phone. This time I spoke to Semp
myself.

Semp
’s voice is rich and musical. In general, his style of conversation is not the modern, quickly discursive, or frank kind favored in cities. He pauses, he thinks, he builds up to his point, and then, as though dissatisfied that he hasn’t sufficiently expressed the truth, he begins to dig around some more.

It can take a long time to talk to Semp
.