Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (7 page)

A Buddhist priest had given the seeds to Semp
and was urging people across T
hoku to plant sunflowers; it is believed that sunflowers have the ability to remove radiation from topsoil. The sunflower project was part of a wider effort across much of T
hoku to make the ground safe again for children to play.

Behind the house, the large new
hond
, or main temple hall, stood unfinished, its metal ribs open to the elements. A blue tarp covered the roof. The new temple was supposed to have been completed by the end of the year, but after the earthquake and tsunami, construction had been halted. Every able-bodied carpenter was focused on repair and reconstruction.

Semp
greeted us as we got out of the taxi. He then immediately started in on his plans for taking care of my grandfather’s bones. The speed with which he directed the conversation was disconcerting. Usually when we arrived at the temple, there was time for pleasantries, for tea, talk, and old-fashioned manners. Instead, Semp
barreled on in a business-like fashion, and his wife Ry
ko did not come out to say hello. She spent nearly our entire visit in the kitchen doing
kumihimo
, a Japanese craft in which single strands of thread are wound together tightly to create straps or belts. As a sometimes obsessive knitter, I understood. Knitting took me through the aftermath of 9/11 when I lived in New York.

Semp
said, “We should bury these bones before Obon. This August will be his Niibon.” Obon is the Buddhist celebration of ancestors when the souls of the dead are able to return home to visit family, and Niibon means “the first Obon after someone’s death.” In other words, this coming August would be my grandfather’s first visit home since dying. We needed to give his soul a new and permanent home. Yes, even if, as he promised, his spirit had ridden the back of the
hototogisu
to see us in May. This is a good time for me to
point out that Japan is, among other things, the land of exceptions and acceptable contradictions.

While my mother and Semp
tucked themselves into a corner of the house to talk about my grandfather’s bones, the middle son, Takahagi, and I retired to the elevated walkway connecting the main house to the temple. Takahagi was thirty years old and the temple relative to whom I am closest. When he was younger, he was an eccentric fashionista, driving his secondhand American hearse down to Harajuku boutiques to buy his clothes. Whenever I arrived in the past, our eyes darted over each other, furtively, looking to see who was wearing what, before we launched into conversations about his girlfriend and my boyfriend. Even now, a married man, Takahagi had a penchant for hats, drapey sleeves, and dramatic jewelry. But on this visit he did not have the youthful look of one hungrily searching for a happy diversion.

As the second son in the family, Takahagi has always been the Prince Harry to his older brother’s Prince William. Takahagi spent two years at Komazawa University, a prestigious Buddhist college founded in 1592 in T
ky
. He simultaneously went to the Eiheiji Betsuin, the T
ky
branch of the great Zen monastery Eiheiji. After two years in T
ky
, Takahagi received an associate’s degree from Komazawa University and Buddhist priest certification from the Eiheiji Betsuin. Then he returned home.