Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (71 page)

I had long wanted to see Okuribi in Matsushima, Japan’s famous series of pine tree–dotted islands that have inspired so many artists and poets throughout the centuries. There I would send the spirits of my ancestors home.

FOURTEEN

F
AREWELL TO
O
LD
S
OULS

F
OR HUNDREDS OF YEARS,
the town of Matsushima has hosted a special Obon in conjunction with the Zen temple Zenk
ji. When I arrived at Matsushima for Obon, it was as though I had walked into a scene straight out of my childhood. In the center of a large field by the ocean was an elevated platform with a speaker. The square was ringed by lanterns, and the perimeter lined by vendors selling drinks and traditional festival food: grilled squid, chicken, and
okonomiyaki
, a kind of everything-is-in-it pancake. As the sun was setting, a group of schoolchildren performed
taiko
drumming. Then it became dark, and the lanterns and their soft, magical light took over the square, and the highlight of the evening began: Obon dancing.

Women and children dressed in traditional outfits assembled in a circle, and as a singer’s voice began to slide up and down the pentatonic scale, the dancing began. The dance movements were easy for anyone to pick up on the spot or to dredge up out of their memories: Obon movements are slow and often stylized gestures that reference hoeing or fishing. It was not uncommon for men and women to join the procession and continue on in a circle, and then drop out when they felt like it.

I
N
M
ARCH OF
2011, Matsushima was spared the worst of the tsunami. The smaller outer islands buffered the coast so the waves that reached the shore caused only a bit of damage. Because Matsushima, often cited as one of Japan’s three most scenic spots, is a major tourist attraction, local tourism officials are eager to spread the word that Matsushima was untouched by the disaster.

“Of course,” a tour guide confided to me after we had spoken for a good fifteen minutes, “if your house was on the wrong side of the islands, or in East Matsushima where there are no islands at all . . .” He trailed off.

The neighborhood of Nobiru is just six miles east of Matsushima train station; and it is one part of the larger town of East Matsushima, where over a thousand people perished and where waves reached over a hundred feet in height. Nobiru was the first true tsunami disaster area I visited in 2011, a few days after Semp
had taken me to the beach by the Sai no Kawara in Iwaki. As I rode a bus to Nobiru, I thought everything looked normal: houses were intact, women sat by the road shucking scallops, and a phalanx of cars navigated the narrow streets, which had once served horses and the occasional palanquin. Then the road dipped down into Nobiru, and I disembarked. The bus drove away.

I was left standing on a flat plain. At first, everything seemed quiet. Then I noticed something moving: construction equipment. A police car and an ambulance pulled out from a dusty side road, with lights flashing and the siren off, meaning someone’s body had been found. I studied the landscape. It was all a mottled gray. Here and there were the remains of a few houses. I realized that the gray was the pulverized remains of buildings and their contents. For several miles all I could see were sheets and bicycles and glass and teapots mixed in with tree branches and roof tiles and books.

I climbed a slight incline and found a house where the lower floors had been flooded but the upper levels had been spared. The
tsunami was cruel this way. Houses just a few feet up a hill gave enough protection to their residents.

Where the road wasn’t carved out in the tsunami plain, the ground was a mess of human belongings, of trees, metal, timber, and glass. I saw more than one abandoned Game Boy. Here and there were little corners of order. On a set of concrete steps to a demolished home, I saw a little pot of tea and two cups set up. It was a tidy tea-drinking station prepared for the men driving trucks and bulldozers.

I passed what looked like the remains of a small restaurant or café. At least that’s what I thought, because I saw a sign intentionally propped right side up that said, “
Irasshai
.” Welcome. A mound by the sign at first seemed like more debris, but when I looked at it carefully, I saw that the debris had a shape. Someone had constructed a tiny pile of order out of flowers, empty drink bottles, beads, and a photo. “Thank you,” said a handwritten note that I assumed was intended for the store’s proprietor, now dead.

A little farther along I saw another of these tiny piles beside a mound of junk. In the pile was a Snoopy. A plastic doll. A stuffed bear. A rescue worker—perhaps more than one—had found children’s toys and placed them there in case someone came looking for them, in case someone needed a favored stuffed animal. I thought of all the tender bonds that were torn by the tsunami, and of how we humans try and try again to knit ourselves together, and how we are at our best and our happiest when we do. I thought that of all the cruel and futile things that can happen to us in life, the very worst is when we are separated.

A
S NOSTALGIC AS
the dancing and the music made me, I had come to Matsushima for something else. I was here to send off my ancestors through
t
r
nagashi,
or “lantern floating.” The tradition
is quite old, and there are numerous variations of it across Japan. In Matsushima you purchase a floating rectangular lantern, along with a ticket for a boat ride. You then write down the names of those you had called home for Obon—whom you now needed to send back. Just as it was becoming dark, I took my lantern and climbed aboard a boat, which set out into the beautiful Matsushima Bay.

A prerecorded voice welcomed us all aboard and then recounted the events of March 11, 2011. It had been a terrible day for Japan, the voice said, and the citizens of Matsushima and her surrounding towns had also suffered.

Several dozen families stood on the prow of the ship with their lanterns, all laughing and joking as they took turns writing down the names of their family members.

“Look!” one of the children cried.

Off in the distance was a rowboat with a line of floating lanterns trailing behind it. Because it was so dark I could barely make out the shape of the people putting the lanterns in the water. The effect was of little orbs of light launching into the air before coming to rest in the water. Soon there were a dozen lanterns, and then there were hundreds.

Our boat came to a stop, and we were asked to bring our lanterns down to a designated location. I had written my farewells to my father and my grandparents—and the many other people I had realized I was missing over the course of the past few days, and whose names I had added to my prayers. A man took my lanterns and put them in a line with several dozen other lanterns. Someone else helped to move the lanterns through the line, until yet another man, using a wooden implement shaped like a potato masher, gently lowered each lantern into the water, where it took off. I tried to keep track of my lanterns to see where they might go.

By now it was quite dark. Several boats set out from Matsushima to deposit lanterns, and soon the sea was awash with pinpricks of
light mirroring the stars overhead. It was humbling to consider that each lantern most likely represented more than one person. The number of deceased people for whom we were collectively grieving was enormous. Far away, back on shore, was an even brighter cluster of lights where people were dancing. This brilliant island of light looked so inviting, and I thought to myself that this was what the dead would see as they left us. I wondered if this final image was as bittersweet for them as it was for me.

After a while, I noticed something odd. The lanterns bunched together. They were riding the currents, of course, but the overall effect was as though the lanterns were traveling in clusters, as though some of the souls out at sea were in fact not alone but traveling home to the horizon with each other.

R
ESIDENTS OF
M
ORIOKA,
a city about 120 miles northeast of Sendai, have their own way of sending off the dead. At dusk, the townspeople carry colorfully decorated ten-foot-long barges to the river’s edge; the boats are festooned with paper decorations in the traditional Buddhist colors: red, white, yellow, blue, and green. They are also covered with paper letters and paper banners bearing the names of those who have died that year. When it is dark, the boats are carried into the water one by one and set on fire so that each one explodes as it goes down the stream.

The boats are guided down the river by teams of men who have spent the year meeting up and training for this particular moment. In feudal times, this kind of festival was a testament to the cooperative nature required of farmers and fishermen who had to work together.

The teams color-coordinated, and all the men on each team wear the same T-shirts, shorts, headbands, and, in some instances,
happi
coats; the latter is a special cloak used during festivals. A barge in
flames is extremely hot and very often the men end up shirtless in the river. There is always a team leader—there is always a leader in Japan—and once the boat is in the water, there is a lot of yelling about how to keep the boat upright, which the men do by pulling on several ropes that have been attached to the stern and the prow.