Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (82 page)

When I met Kaneta’s wife, I at last understood how he was able to devote so much time outside of his own temple, for she was beautiful, extremely smart, and very kind. She was dressed in a kimono the day that I met her and had the slim, perfect grace that I envy in women who embody the very perfection of the Japanese female ideal.

Later when I visited their home, she showed me how she had hung up Taik
’s black-and-white robe from a rafter separating the living quarters from the living room. As it swayed in the breeze, the robe seemed slightly alive. “I’m trying to pretend he is still here,” she said to me wistfully.

She worried about her oldest son. He had lost a lot of weight at Eiheiji, and she said she will be relieved when he comes home in six months and starts graduate school at the University of T
hoku. Because he was in his second year at Eiheiji, he was granted special privileges: He had his own room. He had also been allowed to keep a cell phone, provided, in the Japanese way of making exceptions, no one saw it. He and his father had worked together to write out the questions and answers used during the dharma combat ceremony. It had been their joint idea for Taik
to address the issue of the tsunami head-on, and to declare in front of all the
danka
there that he intended to make it part of his work to continue relieving their suffering. The final script they had come up with together had been sent out to the young boy who participated in the dharma combat ceremony, and to the other young priests.

One night, exhausted from a late-night cram session, Taik
fell asleep with the phone in his hand. He was discovered by his
r
shi
, his master, and duly punished. The phone was removed. From here on out, Taik
would have to communicate with his parents only by letter.

Over noodles, we—my mother, Kaneta, his wife, and I—talked about the changes Kaneta had seen in the past two years. He told us about Okawa, a small community in Ishinomaki that had suffered the single highest loss of children’s lives due to the tsunami. At the Okawa school, a disagreement between teachers over what to do with the children who had not yet been picked up by their parents had led to a delay in evacuating, which meant that the students and all but one teacher were not on higher ground when the first wave hit.

In the beginning, Kaneta had gone around to visit the parents and the families and listened to their grievances. Two years ago, they had all been shocked and paralyzed by grief. But, said Kaneta, things changed this year when a group of parents traveled all the way to Eiheiji to stay overnight. Then, as I had also done, they woke up early in the morning to watch the
h
y
, the early-morning ceremony.

“Taik
said it was extraordinary,” Kaneta grinned. “He said everyone was shaken by the power of that
h
y
, when they read out the names of all seventy of these lost children. But it goes to show,” he nodded, “how far we have come that the parents felt well enough to come to Eiheiji, instead of waiting for us to go to them.”

He took me on a tour of his temple, and my son followed along, banging all the drums and ringing all the bells. As I had expected, Kaneta’s temple was a neat, sharp, confident structure with airy rooms and a tidy, immaculate garden. Everything about the place suggested that it was good at taking care of people’s needs.

I asked Kaneta about Hina’s family.

“Everyone is much better,” Kaneta said. “The grandmother has stopped crying every day, and she doesn’t watch the videos all the time.” It helped that Hina’s little brother was now a sturdy fellow who was walking and saying a few words.