Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone

"Richard Lloyd Parry was a foreign correspondent in Tokyo at the time of the Japanese tsunami in 2011. In telling the story of that disaster, he focuses on one village primary school where almost all the children lost their lives, and the long investigation into whether their teachers were partly to blame for their deaths. It turns into a rich and moving story about the attempts of the parents to seek justice, and the traumatic effects of the tsunami not only on the communities most immediately affected, but on Japanese society as a whole. The fact that so many of the shrines to ancestors were swept away in the tsunami was a cause of real pain and suffering to the survivors. Many felt that they’d lost their forebears as well as their descendants. It was not just the children, but also the dead who were obliterated. Some turned to supernatural beings to sustain them—spirits and ghosts. Lloyd Parry talks about the stoicism of the Japanese, which can amount to a ‘quietism’, a tendency to submit to fate rather than to fight back and respond. In some ways, the parents of the children who died bucked that trend and embodied a new way of being. He conveys all this very richly and sensitively. It’s beautifully written and gives you an understanding of Japanese culture as well as this specific event. Tremendously. But it’s not a depressing book. It’s so attentive and tender. I think the writers of these accounts of sadness and suffering are skilled enough to supply a satisfying shape to the story, but scrupulous enough to also leave something open at the end. Aspects of these violent events have to remain a mystery, and their legacy is still unfolding. Yes, and you can start blurring as a writer and researcher, too. On one level, you’re aware that this is all true because you’re trying to be accurate, faithful to the facts. But as you put it together, you start to treat it as your story, and the facts as your material. And then you get little, intense jolts of, ‘Oh my goodness, this really happened. This is a real person.’ When I got in touch with the niece of one of Christie’s victims, I was startled to be reminded of how raw the emotions might still be for people directly connected to the case. I was reminded of how intrusive and painful it can be to revive these stories. Even 70 years on, there are still living people who have been hurt and changed by what happened. Kate Summerscale will be speaking at Cambridge Literary Festival on Saturday 26 April. Buy tickets here: Hallie Rubenhold & Kate Summerscale | Why Do Men Kill Women? – Cambridge Literary Festival"