Dreaming in Japanese

A Broken World: Triple Disasters in Japan

John-gohorry-ostrich-cadenzas-kyoto-journal

To Read:

Hojoki, by Kamo-no-Chomei, translated by Yasuhiko Moriguchi and David Jenkins

(Also, about Hojoki: William LaFleur's Karma of Words)

Alison Watts' beautifully written essay in Words Without Boarders:
Literary Journeys: Living Through Art in the Wake of Disaster 

Ghosts of the Tsunami, by Richard Lloyd Parry:

It's easy to send thoughts and prayers and move on if you're not among those whose lives were altered by the storms. But natural disasters continue to destroy lives long after the damage is done. In his new book Ghosts of the Tsunami, author Richard Lloyd Parry considers the aftermath of the 2011 Japanese tsunami, which took thousands of lives, and which haunts its survivors to this day. It's a wrenching chronicle of a disaster that, six years later, still seems incomprehensible.

He takes his readers deep into Tohoku, "a remote, marginal, faintly melancholy place, the symbol of a rural tradition that, for city dwellers, is no more than a folk memory." Many in the region practice ancestor worship, treating the dead and the objects that represent them with veneration; the tsunami destroyed their altars and photographs, leaving families spiritually battered and doing "appalling violence to the religion of ancestors,"

Parry writes."A tsunami does to human connectedness the same thing that it does to roads, bridges, and homes," he writes. "And in Okawa, and everywhere in the tsunami zone, people fell to quarreling and reproaches, and felt the bitterness of injustice and envy and fell out of love."

(NPR Review)

March Was Made of Yarn: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown 
by Elmer Luke (Editor), David Karashima (Editor) And Yoko Tawada's Emissary (?)

Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure: A Tale That Begins with Fukushima
by Hideo Furukawa, Doug Slaymaker

Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
by Lucy Birmingham (Goodreads Author), David McNeill

Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami
by Gretel Ehrlich

Station Blackout, by Charles Castro

Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster
by David Lochbaum and Union of Concerned Scientists

Also:

Adam Higginbotham's dazzling Midnight in Chernobyl

Eric Schlosser's (it will keep you up at night) Command and Control

Want to read:

James Mahaffey's Atomic Accidents

Brian P Hanley Radiation--Exposure and its Treatment

On the Brink: The Inside Story of Fukushima Daiichi 
by Ryusho Kadota (MOVIE coming out Fukushima 50)

Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa's Deluge: Two Novellas of Japan's 3/11 Disaster
by Yusuke Kimura 

And don't forget: 

George Monbiot's Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power

Japan Times article: Culture of safety can make or break nuclear power plants
BY AIRI RYU AND NAJMEDIN MESHKATI

To See:

The Atlantic: Great East Japan Earthquake in pictures

 

To Watch:

Fukushima: A Nuclear Story

Frontline: Inside Japan's Nuclear Meltdowns

Footage of Sendai Airport During Earthquake and Tsunami

HBO Chernobyl

 

To Think About:

Lucy Jones at Caltech has repeatedly warned us to prepare for the big one in California. She thinks, and I agree, that our connections and ability to work with our neighbors is one of the single highest determiners of survival. The Japanese worked together in a way unthinkable in Los Angeles. She has been urging people to form neighborhood preparedness groups. My friend Beatrice told me about this. She is a leader for such a group in Santa Monica.  

 

Animals

 Ostrich Defies Containment: A selection from thirty-three ostrich cadenzas by John Gohorry in Kyoto Journal

Science Alert: Animals are Flourishing in Fukushima Exclusion Zone

Fukushima Pictures in the Guardian

++

Vodka

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