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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / From Japan, What ‘Brave & Serious’ Actually Look Like

From Japan, What ‘Brave & Serious’ Actually Look Like

by Anne Laurie|  April 8, 20115:10 pm| 15 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Foreign Affairs

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Maybe some perspective, but mostly, stories worth sharing. From the NYTimes, news that Barbara Walters can stop pretending she’s the toughest old broad in show business:

The requests to see her perform had dwindled over the years. But when the earthquake struck at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, this city’s last geisha was, fittingly, at home getting ready to sing that night at Kamaishi’s 117-year-old ryotei, an exclusive restaurant featuring fine food and entertainment where she began working as a 14-year-old seven decades ago.
__
She had already put on the white split-toe socks she would wear with her kimono and was preparing to put her hair up. Hired to entertain a party of four in honor of a colleague’s transfer from Kamaishi, she had picked just the right song, one meant to steel young samurai going to their first battle.
__
But a tsunami would engulf this city within 35 minutes and, as Kamaishi trembled from at least 15 big aftershocks during that short time, the geisha, Tsuyako Ito, 84, fought to survive….

And from the Washington Post, “For those who stay in Japan’s battered towns, a less comfortable life begins“:

Koichi Ohtsu is 63, and he realizes now that the last part of his life will be the hardest.
__
He is prepared for it. If he loses his university teaching job because too few students enroll next semester, he will stay in this tsunami-stricken coastal city and tutor. If the local stores stay near-empty, he’ll drive an hour inland for groceries, then come back to cook dinner. Ishinomaki is home. Weeks from now, perhaps, he’ll be able to walk to the hilltop Buddhist shrine near his house and look down at the city without sobbing.
__
“I am ready,” Ohtsu said. “I am ready to share the burden.”…
__
He and his mother went the first week without electricity. He checked on his neighbors, found those with damaged homes, and soon 10 people — including three teenage girls — were sleeping on tatami mats in Ohtsu’s small house…
__
Ohtsu had become a teacher, he said, in part because he liked to think, and teaching gave him time to think. “Who am I?” he liked to ask himself, and after the earthquake, he had clearer answers. He’d lost his wife 13 years ago to a heart attack. They hadn’t had children. Ohtsu was now, foremost, a son — a caretaker for his mother, Toyoko. She needed him. She had early-stage Alzheimer’s, which meant that every day, she woke up and learned all over again about what had happened to their city…

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Reader Interactions

15Comments

  1. 1.

    PeakVT

    April 8, 2011 at 5:24 pm

    Is the Japanese government doing better at reacting outside the Fukushima Dai-ichi exclusion zone than inside? I have no sense of how things are going, or if they are at all.

  2. 2.

    Ruckus

    April 8, 2011 at 5:26 pm

    This puts my life, which seems pretty desperate right now, in perspective.
    I have been in a pretty big earthquake, even lost my business and live with injuries because of it, but compared to Japan right now, it was nothing.

  3. 3.

    JAHILL10

    April 8, 2011 at 5:35 pm

    I love that the man who saved the 84 year old geisha did so because she was the only person who knew how to sing a particular song from their town.

  4. 4.

    Linda Featheringill

    April 8, 2011 at 5:39 pm

    @Ruckus:
    You’re right of course. There are some really rough times ahead in Japan, from all I can tell.

    Regarding your life:

    Somewhere deep in the text of the Tao Te Ching [please don’t ask me to dig up the reference] is the observation that enjoying music and food encourages good luck to come to you.

    What have you got to lose?

  5. 5.

    Jamie

    April 8, 2011 at 5:53 pm

    To be fair Growing up in the ruins of post world War 2 Japan, was no walk in the park either.

  6. 6.

    arguingwithsignposts

    April 8, 2011 at 5:53 pm

    If you get the chance and you have netflix instant, this episode of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” is worth watching. There are geisha’s and it’s relatively peaceful by his standards. Props to the Fukushima “50.”

  7. 7.

    stuckinred

    April 8, 2011 at 6:02 pm

    @arguingwithsignposts: Added, thanks!

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    April 8, 2011 at 6:03 pm

    @PeakVT:

    Is the Japanese government doing better at reacting outside the Fukushima Dai-ichi exclusion zone than inside? I have no sense of how things are going, or if they are at all.

    A very touching eyewitness account can be found here Japan quake: Aid worker’s diary A bit of what it has been like:

    I chat with Kimito Iwama, a man who spends his day clearing the roads. He lost his home, and his parents and brother are still missing. At the end of every day, he goes looking for them before heading to an evacuation centre where he helps manage the needs of 140 of his neighbours.
    __
    “I am afraid we will lose the attention of the media,” he says; when the media move on, the world often forgets. “Please don’t forget about us.”

  9. 9.

    Egypt Steve

    April 8, 2011 at 6:13 pm

    Fine for them, but Dick Cheney says the American way of life is not negotiable. If this happens to us, the only and obvious solution will be further tax cuts.

  10. 10.

    meander

    April 8, 2011 at 6:36 pm

    I was watching NHK World the other night to catch up on Japanese news and saw a startling story: Japanese businesses are asking for special taxes to help with disaster recovery. The story said that the business group (the Japanese Chamber of Commerce?) thought that it made sense to tax the entire nation to help with the regional recovery.

    Here’s one piece of Japanese tax coverage at Reuters saying that “Hiromasa Yonekura, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, said the influential lobby would not fight the government if it decided to shelve a plan to lower the corporate tax rate”.

    And another from Market Watch saying

    The Japanese government is considering a special tax to help finance relief and recovery efforts in earthquake- and tsunami-hit Japan, according to a published report Thursday.
    . The tax could come in the form of a hike in such levies as the consumption, corporate and income taxes, Japanese business daily Nikkei reported Thursday evening, citing unidentified sources.

  11. 11.

    Gina

    April 8, 2011 at 6:49 pm

    Thank you AL, nice to get some perspective after being subject to a day of primate hooting and poo flinging over the shutdown/not shutdown issue. Not referring to BJers, stuff IRL.

  12. 12.

    Ruckus

    April 8, 2011 at 7:03 pm

    @Linda Featheringill:
    Thank you. It is all true that enjoying life is the best reward. But I accepted years ago that the theme for my life is: If I didn’t have bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.
    I’ve tried going with my gut, I’ve tried doing the opposite of what my instincts tell me, I’ve tried friends advice, I’ve gone to school.
    I have realized that it brings me serenity to know my place in the overall scheme of life.

  13. 13.

    Jim, Once

    April 8, 2011 at 7:09 pm

    She had early-stage Alzheimer’s, which meant that every day, she woke up and learned all over again about what had happened to their city…

    Heartbreaking. Just heartbreaking. What a good man her son is.

  14. 14.

    PeakVT

    April 8, 2011 at 7:18 pm

    @Brachiator: Thanks.

  15. 15.

    BruceFromOhio

    April 8, 2011 at 10:55 pm

    @Jim, Once: I came to post exactly this, thanks.

    In the ruins, the power of love endures.

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