Authors: Gretel Ehrlich
High on a hill a huge white statue of Kannon looks down on Kamaishi’s ruined harbor. What does the Goddess of Compassion think now? I ask Abyss-san. He smiles. “She says she has a lot of work to do.” Laughter. We’re looking for an eighty-four-year-old geisha whose life was saved by a sake merchant who hoisted her on his back and ran to safety. She’s been dubbed “The Last Geisha of Kamaishi,” and we find her in an evacuation center, once the gym of a junior high school.
Her dancing name was Chikano Fujima, though she’s also known as Tsuyako, or “Ito-san.” Still a beauty, with high cheekbones, gray hair pulled back tight, and sparkling dark eyes, she is the last holder of an ancient song, an
uta
called the “Hamauta,” or the “Kamaishi Bay Fisherman’s Song.”
“People wanted to hear it again,” she told me. “And I’m not going to let the tsunami get in the way.” She had been preparing for a summer performance when the tsunami came.
“The Hamauta always brought fish into the nets; it brought prosperity. I used a basket as a prop and put fish into it. There was a special Kamaishi dance that went with the song. When I performed it, everyone was quiet. I’m the last person alive who knows the song.”
Now her house is gone but the restaurant where she worked as a geisha still stands. The Saiwai Rou is beautiful inside, but after the tsunami it became a soup kitchen: the owners housed and fed two hundred people. These days it’s a restaurant again, and townspeople are holding their funeral dinners there. “Of its one hundred twenty years of operation, I was there for seventy of them,” the geisha says proudly.
Ito-san was fourteen when she left school and went to the Shibashi area of Tokyo for training to be a geisha. “It’s what I always wanted to do. I’d go and see their performances and feel a passion about it: I wanted to be just like them.” She skipped school and instead learned to play the shamisen. “I was told I had a good ear. I loved it. I’ve always performed, even now. At least, before the tsunami.
“When I was young the ironworks in this town were big and there were lots of fishermen here too. The fish market was very active. Whenever there was a storm, the fishermen tied their boats together and came into the bars and I’d play the shamisen and entertain them. There were many geishas then. Now I’m the last one.”
She lived upstairs at the restaurant and performed downstairs at night. During the war Kamaishi’s iron factories were targets and she had to flee. In another town she married a sushi chef and had one child. “It was not the life for me,” she says, “so I left when the war ended and came back here.” Later, she moved in with the head of the geisha training school. “His wife had left him, so I took his name and his tradition.”
Ito-san’s eyes light up when I point to the photograph of her that graced the front page of the
New York Times
as well as the
Mainichi News
. It’s pinned to a cardboard box next to her futon with a wooden clothespin. Since then, she’s had a constant stream of visitors, much to the amusement of the other refugees. She’s a country geisha, not a slim, polished, white-faced performer
from Kyoto, but she has a vivacity that they don’t have. More often than not, her determined mouth is set in a beautiful smile.
Ito-san takes my hand and tells me her most recent news: someone found her obi in the rubble and returned it to her, though everything else in her house was lost.
“Where’s the man who saved your life?” I ask. “I’d like to meet him.” She smiles, stands, and says, “Let’s go find him.” Abyss-san pulls the van to the front door and, despite his attempts to assist her, she jumps into the high front seat with a young woman’s agility.
Down the ruined streets we go, past the huge ship and its red hull, looping up the hill past the restaurant where Ito-san performed, and around again. Her window is open and she waves at everyone like a queen. People run to the side of the van to greet her. “You are looking wonderful,” they say.
She points to the remains of a large two-story structure on a corner. “That’s my house,” she says excitedly, and doesn’t seem to mind that it’s in ruins. “I was trying to get to the front door during the earthquake but it was shaking so hard, I couldn’t stand up. That’s when Hiroyuki Maruki, my friend who sells sake, came by. When he saw me crawling, he stopped. Then he just reached down and pulled me onto his back and started running. He carried me all the way up the hill, just as the tsunami water began coming in. He saved my life.”
We stop the van in front of what was the local liquor store, now emptied. She asks her friends where Hiroyuki-san might be. They tell her he’s living in temporary housing right next to the evacuation center where she and her nephew are camped. “He’s still taking orders and delivering sake too!” they say. When we get back, he’s waiting for us. They’d called him and told him we were on the way.
“Oh, she was heavy,” Hiroyuki-san says, laughing. “I carried her up this hill over there,” he says, pointing. “We spent
the night there; we watched our houses wash away. But I saved the family dog. He’s not as heavy!” And out from under his arm comes a small white poodle.
The next day the survivors were told to go to a temple. But when they got there, they found it was burning down. They were then directed to go to the school gym. Well-known and loved by all, Ito-san was taken care of quickly. Hiroyuki-san says, “They found a special futon for her and she’s been on it ever since, receiving visitors from all over the world. Al Jazeera is coming tomorrow!”
Ito-san looks at Hiroyuki-san with pleasure. “I’ve known him since before he was born,” she says excitedly. “I’m the seventh generation in my family in the entertainment business. It may end up with me. I’m not sure if I’m going to set up shop again. My children live in Chiba Province. They’ve invited me to move in with them. But”—she gives Hiroyuki-san a hug—“I’d rather stay here with my friends.”
Boxes surround her futon. Her nephew, Satoshi, an architect, resides in the cubicle next to hers. He watches the procession of visitors with a look of respect and amusement, referring to his aunt as
sensei
—teacher.
Someone kneels beside me. Ito-san looks up, puzzled, then I look too: it’s a young geisha in full regalia, but this one is Caucasian, not Japanese. “You are beautiful,” Ito-san says.
Her name is Sayuki. Heavy-set with a smooth face, her mannerisms are correct and formal, though she’s Australian. “I’m a western Geisha,” she tells me and says she wears dark contacts to cover her blue eyes. It’s her third year performing in Asakusa, an entertainment area of Tokyo. It was there that she heard about Ito-san. “People in the geisha world were worried about her; that’s why I’ve come north today.” She hands a carefully wrapped package to Ito-san. It’s a kimono. “To take the place of the ones you lost,” she says.
When the Australian geisha and her driver stand to leave,
Hiroyuki-san gives me something in a paper bag: a lovely bottle of sake. “You see, I’m still in business, even if I have no store! I make deliveries. If you like sake, please accept this. And thank you for coming from so far away to meet us,” he says.
Ito-san’s eyes sparkle. She leans in close and whispers: “Would you like to hear something?” I bow and nod yes. Out comes the shamisen from under a soft cloth. Hiroyuki sits on his heels attentively. As Ito-san tunes her instrument, he whispers, “I love this song. It pulls at the heart.”
Slowly Ito-san begins plucking the three strings. Her voice quavers at first, then grows stronger, and the words of the Hamauta begin.
Two gifts: the bottle of sake, and the hum of the cavernous room going quiet as it fills with the sound of Ito-san’s sweet song.
Thousands were evacuated from the area around Fukushima Daiichi but no one counted the animals left behind. Farmers, horse breeders, pig and chicken farmers, and owners of pets were forced to flee. Some were told they would be gone for only one night, so they left food and water behind for the animals. But they were not allowed to come back. Dogs left tied up died of dehydration and starvation. Others, unchained, succumbed to infections caused by cuts after being tossed around by the tsunami. Dairy cows died with their heads in stanchions; horses left in stalls were battered by the earthquake and couldn’t get out. They ended up starving to death. Many small animals drowned.
All sentient beings. Not just humans. Everything that lives and breathes, plus the inanimate and the spirits floating around Japan—all are equally important. Elizabeth Oliver, the founder of Animal Refuge Kansai—known as ARK—together with the Tokyo bureau chief of the
Economist
, Henry Tricks, were some of the first people to rescue animals inside Fukushima’s twenty-kilometer zone. “We know that many people died,” Elizabeth said, “but the animals didn’t even have a chance to run for their lives.”
Veterinarians sprayed lime over the dead livestock to prevent the spread of disease. One dairy farmer refused to leave his animals behind and stayed to care for his cows. A man with 330 beef cows could not bear to abandon them, despite the fact that they no longer had any dollar value. He is permitted to enter the zone to feed the cattle, and gives out extra hay and grain for the
strays that come streaming in. No one will ever know how many animals have died or how many still remain.
Elizabeth and Henry recall arriving at a stable still full of horses. Henry said, “Rushes and driftwood tangled up in the halters hanging on the wall suggest the tsunami rose high up above the horses’ necks. Some of the stalls collapsed under the weight of the water. In the sun outside, six of the horses lay dead. Many of the living were lacerated along their legs and necks, suggesting sheer panic as they tried to climb out of their stalls. Remarkably, many survived. Their big trusting eyes conceal unimaginable suffering. Their emaciated bodies say more.”
Elizabeth said that some of the horses could not walk up the loading ramps: “They had to stay behind, which broke our hearts.”
Elizabeth is a British citizen who came to Japan by accident. Waylaid on a round-the-world trip three decades ago, she never finished her journey. Twenty years ago she founded ARK with a group of volunteers and friends and has established two animal rescue shelters, one in Tokyo and the other in Osaka, and is building a large facility in Sasayama, her home in the mountains near Nara.
Since the tsunami, she has been sending frequent newsletters. The most alarming of them announced that the government was intending to ban people from entering the twenty-kilometer zone after April 22. Anyone caught inside was to be given thirty days in jail and fined 100,000 yen. On May 12, the government decided to slaughter all livestock in the zone.
Horses have been bred in Fukushima Prefecture for over a thousand years and their annual Samurai and Horse Festival is famous. A Japanese horse rescue group, Hisaiba, was contacted by ARK and arrived a week later to transport animals to their shelter just outside the thirty-kilometer zone. “When we arrived
there, the horses’ eyes lit up as they seemed to come alive knowing they would be safe,” the head of Hisaiba said. Two hundred Fukushima horses in the no/go zone were adopted by the wealthy Hokkaido racehorse breeder, Katsumi Yoshida, who shipped them by truck and ferry to his sixteen-hundred-hectare farm.
As word spread about the animals around Fukushima Daiichi and the ones lost on the Tohoku coast, animal rescuers began penetrating the no/go zone.
Mayu was wearing three-inch wedge tennis shoes, heavy makeup, jewelry, and tight jeans when I met her inside a crowded Tokyo donut shop. She had never rescued an animal before the disaster, and doesn’t own a pet. Now she’s one of the guerrilla animal rescuers.
“A friend from Fukushima City called and asked if I would go to the thirty-kilometer zone to look for animals that had been left behind,” she began. “I said yes. We found dogs tied up and left to guard the houses. They were hungry. We poured out piles of dog food for them and brought water.
“It’s impossible to tell where the thirty-kilometer zone ends and the twenty-kilometer zone begins. We just kept going further in. When we got to the fifteen-kilometer zone there were signs left by the police that said, ‘Please don’t enter. Danger Zone.’ We kept going.
“The towns were completely vacant. So many dogs roaming around with collars on. The dogs that weren’t tied up came to us. We fed and watered them and put them into the car. None of them tried to bite us. They knew we were there to help. We had a four-wheel drive with cages in the back. We went looking for the ones left inside. It was weird breaking into people’s houses. But we got a lot of dogs out and drove them the three hours to the shelter in Fukushima City.
“That’s how our days were: we’d arrive by nine or ten in the morning and leave by four. There were some police who saw us. They warned us that if we were killed by wandering thieves, no one would find us. But most of the police felt sad for the animals and encouraged us. They just said, ‘Be careful, and good luck.’
“It was impossible for us to rescue cattle and horses. We only had a car. But we saw some and they were in bad shape. We went to a town that had been flattened by the tsunami and saw dead horses. All I remember is the horrible look of starvation on their faces. Their eyes had fallen out, and they were lying on their sides.
“At some point it became illegal to enter the inner zones. Barriers were erected and we couldn’t get the car through. The government said they were going to euthanize all the animals left behind, despite the fact that some of us were willing to go in and get animals out. I heard that the police were ‘euthanizing’ cows by rubbing detergent down the cows’ throats, leaving them convulsing. A group of us sent a plea to use real medicine. After the lockdown on the zones, we still tried to get it, but they stopped us.
“This was my first time at animal rescue. I spent a total of thirty days inside the no/go zones. I don’t worry about radiation. I’m twenty-seven and live in Tokyo. I have no children. We were probably exposed to much more than we knew about at the time, but it doesn’t worry me. I feel I did the right thing.