March Was Made of Yarn by David Karashima and Elmer Luke (January 2018)
This collection of short stories, essays, and poetry was put together in the aftermath of the March 2011 tsunami that leveled Japan’s northeast coast. Of the many works collected for this project, the two I liked enough to read a second time were the short stories ‘The Charm’ and ‘Pieces’.
I was initially surprised by how little some of the entries in this collection had to do with the tsunami – ‘Pieces’ was mostly about Tokyo's 1987 blackout. But as I made my way through to the end, the loose connections among the works clarified and the central theme – the importance of facing the burden of loss before being able to move on – became evident.
The swift devastation brought from the ocean reminded Japan of how quickly an unexpected event can change everything. In many of the works here, we see how recovery means finding a way to live with joy again. Small joys don’t add up to bury a loss. But a loss does not need to take the next day’s joys away, either.
A related idea I noted in these works was the decoupling of loss and unhappiness. Since the idea is the opposite of the common perception that happiness is acquired, the decoupling first requires rejecting the link between happiness and acquisition. Those who believe in building a future via accumulation will inevitably conflate loss with unhappiness. To look down the long, winding road of the future and accept that what’s been lost cannot be rediscovered takes a courageous, hard-earned wisdom. But this is the understanding required to move forward. It is not what is acquired but rather what is lost that becomes the heaviest burdens we must learn to carry.
Japan’s nervous, complex relationship with nuclear power also received a long look from this collection. The tragedies at the power plants did not have anywhere close to the direct loss of life experienced by the coastal towns hit hardest by the tsunami. Yet for many Japanese, the problems at the reactors left their own fresh wound and proved to be yet another reminder of why nuclear power is simply out of the question for so many in the country (1).
The way nuclear fallout renders fertile soil redundant is an additional insult. Japan is a densely populated country whose intimate reliance on the land is perhaps difficult to relate to for those of us in the more sparsely settled United States. For those who’ve grown up with such a strong connection to the land, no amount of electricity will ever justify the inherent risk in powering the entire country with nuclear reactors.
Footnotes / a reference to my first-ever post…
1. If you can’t afford the tip…
As it regards nuclear power, there is also another angle. I do not think many Japanese wish to burden tomorrow’s diners with the tab from today’s meal. And when it comes to nuclear power, ‘tomorrow’ could run for something along the lines of ten thousand years, so it is a serious consideration.
I think this is quickly becoming an easier feeling to relate to for my American readers (and all Americans, really, who at least think about the environment every once in a while). Maybe I’ll give The Pittsburgh Climate Agreement another try the next time I go back home.
