It has been ten years since the devastating Japan earthquake and tsunami .. the aftermath is now known. Years of biological damage from Fukushima, mental anguish from a moment that literally rocked the world and tore apart a coastline of the nation.. There are estimates on how many died, but with so many rural areas being swept out to sea, it will never be known the true final tally on how much suffering occurred within an instant that fateful March 11..
A decade later, the estimate is up to 20,000 dead or missing.
The tenth anniversary of this moment has conjured up old sadness within Japan, and as the world shakes again with dramatic large earthquakes around the plant, and uneasy feeling that one day soon we may see a similar disaster.
The scale of the impact on the people of Japan is unmeasurable. So much changed in a literal instant.
One example of the sadness and grief still being grappled with comes to us from an unconnected phone line in the town of Otsuchi. This story of this location has put the harrowing loss of life into perspective..
In a garden on a hill, under the wide boughs of a cherry tree, a white phone booth glistens in the early spring light.
Inside, Kazuyoshi Sasaki carefully dials his late wife Miwako’s cellphone number, bending his large frame and cradling the handset.
He explains how he searched for her for days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami a decade ago, visiting evacuation centres and makeshift morgues, returning at night to the rubble of their home.
“It all happened in an instant, I can’t forget it even now,” he says, weeping. “I sent you a message telling you where I was, but you didn’t check it.”
“When I came back to the house and looked up at the sky, there were thousands of stars, it was like looking at a jewel box,” the 67-year old says. “I cried and cried and knew then that so many people must have died.”
Sasaki’s wife was one of more than 20,000 people in northeastern Japan killed by the disaster that struck on March 11, 2011.
Many survivors say the unconnected phone line in the town of Otsuchi helps them keep in touch with their loved ones and gives them some solace as they grapple with their grief.
The significance of the phone booth has grown over the previous decades. From media reports, we know this:The phone booth was built by Itaru Sasaki, who owns the garden in Otsuchi, a town some 500 km (310 miles) northeast of Tokyo, a few months before the disaster, after he lost his cousin to cancer.
“There are many people who were not able to say goodbye,” he says. “There are families who wish they could have said something at the end, had they known they wouldn’t get to speak again.”
News reports and documentaries added to the popularity of the phone booth.
It has been dubbed the ‘phone of the wind,’ and is being used by people all over Japan not just to grieve tsunami victims, but also other fates like cancer and disease. We could imagine through COVID, the booth gained additional mourners crying out to family and friends who left the planet.
HOW JAPAN VIEWS DEATH
In Japan, Shinto and Buddhism are major influences on how Japanese view death. Shinto does not focus on the afterlife, while Buddhism emphasizes reincarnation based on karma after someone has passed away. Shinto and Buddhism are practiced simultaneously by most of the Japanese population, with many embracing Buddhist practices as death gets closer.
In Japan, a long culture with many living long lives had led to a common belief that death just is. It will not be controlled and cannot be.. Many parents place an expectation that their oldest child will make end of life arrangements for them in the final moments. It becomes a circle of life process… The living care for the dying and it just occurs.
And perhaps that is where the biggest affect occurred from the 2011 tsunami. Death is a predictable end to life and accepted. But not with the unexpected speed and ferocity that life ended on March 11, 2011. The triple impact disaster killed more than 15,000 almost immediately and created a population at hte time of 300,000 refugees. Major scientific studies have occurred showcasing the amount of mental disorder and post traumatic stress disorders that took place in Japan since that day.
And that is why the Ostuchi phone booth is so meaningful. It is not that Japanese don’t show emotion, but their culture has created a different way of doing so. This phone booth ables people dealing with a decade of grief (*and new grief from new death) the ability to scream and writhe in pain, and to yell to the heavens demanding answers for the grief on earth.
