Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (54 page)

You can visit Sai no Kawara. In fact, there are many Sai no Kawara all over Japan, though the majority are located in T
hoku. They are sacred places, cherished by locals, and the site of unofficial pilgrimages for grieving parents who worry about how their lost children are doing on the invisible journey to the next world. Most are located next to a body of water, such as a river, or by the ocean. Though I grew up knowing that such places existed, my mother had never taken me to any of them. They were so sad, she said, and there were so many other things about Japan that were more important. But the 2013 Japanese documentary in which I participated included a visit to a Sai no Kawara located in Iwaki. And so early on in our filming, I went to the underworld for the first time.

T
HE EVENING BEFORE
the documentary shoot at Sai no Kawara, I was at dinner with the film crew. The conversation, fueled by excellent sashimi and sake, turned to religion. The cameraman, Usui, wanted to know the main difference between Japan and the West.

It was an enormous question. In a lighthearted effort to simplify, I pointed out that the orthodox Judeo-Christian god is a man, that he is often portrayed as a father, and that he tolerates the existence of no other gods. In Shint
, the indigenous Japanese religion, the top spot is reserved for Amaterasu, the sun goddess. Indeed, by the time the documentary was completed and broadcast, there were two
versions: one for Westerners and one for the Japanese. In the version shown internationally, the narrator was a British male. The version shown in Japan was narrated by a woman.

One by one, the crew professed not to be religious at all. But even as they said this, almost all of them had opinions about the side-by-side existence of Shint
and Buddhism.

“It’s very convenient,” said Okisa, our driver. “If one god doesn’t work out, then you can just go to another shrine!”

“There’s always another god,” Usui, the cameraman, agreed.

“It would feel very strange to have just one god,” Okisa said. “Like, how would that work?”

The men gazed into their beers, and the table grew quiet. I realized they were trying to put themselves
there
, in that place where there was always only One God with One Point of View and that He was a he. It made them uncomfortable, and presented an inflexible worldview to which even they, unreligious and modern Japanese men, were not accustomed.

In a very short amount of time, I had grown quite fond of the crew. All of them, except for Okisa, had traveled around the world for NHK, the national broadcasting company of Japan, and belonged to a far more worldly generation of Japanese than my older relatives. But it was moving to see how quintessentially Japanese they still were in the way they checked to see how everyone else was doing. Did everyone have a beer or need more? Okisa, who hailed from T
hoku, in particular kept an eye out on the communal food we shared. “Usui, you haven’t had any sashimi, so this is for you,” he would say, his ability to keep track of who had eaten what apparently remaining an indelible part of his character even after five beers.

“Endo,” Adachi, the soundman, confided to me, “always makes sure we eat well. And if he can, he makes sure there is a bath in the hotel.”

Usui was broad-shouldered, a little swarthy and earthy, and with a low voice and an eye for attractive women. His earthiness made him a skeptic. Had I
really
spent that much time in Japan as a child? Would I please smile at the camera like I actually wanted the survivors of the tsunami to be happy? A practical man, he had a quick eye for excellent lighting, setting, and storytelling.

Adachi was routinely teased by the team for being an
otaku
, which roughly translates to being a geek, and for having a house filled with toys and anime paraphernalia. In true Japanese style, the teasing mostly went on at night when we were eating and drinking (a lot), and was never truly mean. He didn’t seem to mind the teasing too much.

“When I play video games with my wife, she is the navigator,” he said proudly one evening.

“I’ve always wondered,” said Endo, the director, “how an
otaku
like you got married.”

The men laughed uproariously.

“Well? How did you meet your wife?” I asked.

“Skiing.”

“What?” everyone exclaimed. It is perhaps worth noting here that Adachi was not exactly athletic-looking, partly the result of pursuing the latest anime-tie-in pastries for sale at the various convenience shops we visited. In fact, he even reminded me of an anime character, though I’d probably put him in the company of Totoro or Rirakkuma or other large, cuddly animals.

“Hahaha,” Adachi chortled. “You didn’t know I could ski.” Throughout our trip, Adachi paid careful attention to me because I had a cold and was sick and coughing often, which he could hear on his headset. It was Adachi who began giving me medicine from his own supplies to stop the cough. At night in his room, he would play back the sound recorded during the day, and consult with Endo over the quality of the audio. He was precise, superstitious, old-
fashioned, and modern all at once. During a visit to a tsunami debris field, I found an intact teapot and declared that it was a shame to leave it there, unused. “That teapot belongs to someone,” Adachi scolded me, his voice rather low and with an edge to it.

Okisa was still in his twenties and pure T
hoku; he reminded me greatly of my cousin Takahagi. Okisa had been a taxi driver before the tsunami. In the evenings, he told us stories about how his life had instantly changed after the disaster, and how he and his friends had immediately loaded up a car full of cigarettes, alcohol, and medicine and then repeatedly snuck back and forth through military checkpoints to distribute care packages, and to do more grocery and medicine runs as needed. In the wake of the disaster, he had started ferrying media people around T
hoku with such efficiency and expertise—many of them had never been this far northeast in Japan—that he eventually got a job as a driver for NHK. The tsunami had damaged numerous gas stations and convenience stores, and Okisa knew what was open, what had moved, where the new convenience stores were, and where the best food was. The latter was important. I’ve never met a Japanese person who isn’t obsessed with good food.

Then, there was Endo, whom they all respected but also loved to tease for his having gone to Waseda University, which is sort of like going to Princeton. A bright, curious, and worldly person, Endo was also imperturbable, endlessly polite, and driven. He walked just slightly on tiptoe, as though he was always buoyed by some idea or thought; wore large, round practical glasses; and was often in his default expression—the half smile. Unlike Okisa, who dressed fashionably in muted but well-tailored clothes made of denim and cotton, Endo paid little attention to aesthetics in fashion. His vision was large scale. He was passionate about big ideas, and he loved the thrill of unraveling a new mystery and presenting information via the precise art of the intelligent documentary. I’d often see him in
the morning, having finished eating before anyone else. He sat with his cell phone and whipped through notes and Web links with a quickness that reminded me of my grandmother’s students flashing through abacus exercises.

That evening before we went to Sai no Kawara, the conversation turned from religion to ghosts. One by one, everyone admitted to having seen a ghost—except for Endo. He was far too practical and modern to have seen one, but he was fascinated and perhaps even a little envious that everyone else had a ghost story. He did, however, have a related worry.

Before he left home for the filming, Endo had approached his film editor. He had explained the proposed content of the documentary to her, and she had blanched. She had said that since her youth she had been troubled by an ability to see ghosts. They always made her sick. Since the tsunami, she had worked on a few programs that had been filmed in T
hoku, and had become violently ill. She had asked Endo to please be careful while on this particular shoot, and he, ever the rationalist, had listened to her fears and calmed her down.