It’s not difficult to offer condolences and prayers to the communities devastated by natural disaster. We may watch the disaster news coverage with mild shock and feel horrified by watching videos of people consumed by giant waves in real-time. Yet the excessive coverage of mayhem and death kind of creates an emotional detachment or desensitizes viewers. If we are not among those whose lives are altered by the natural disaster, the death toll and other astounding statistics tend to defy comprehension, holding us back from understanding the real human & environmental costs. In the study of such calamities, there’s a need for more personalized, deeply empathetic approach which should convey a lot more than the quantitative figures. British author and journalist Richard Lloyd Parry’s Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone (published August 2017) provides such a profoundly humanistic look at the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Richard Parry, Asia editor of the Times, has been living in Tokyo for more than two decades. On March 11, 2011 he was sitting in his office when he felt the strong vibrations. Earthquakes are common phenomenon in Japan and the tremors are much regular things. Nevertheless, despite being miles from the epicenter, the experience was mildly frightening. Thirty minutes later, Richard walks outside and finds no visible damage to buildings and people (“In 30 mins stroll… I saw one cracked window and a few walls”, he reports). But this powerful earthquake – 9.1 on the Richter scale – that occurred 20 miles beneath the sea about 250 miles from Tokyo soon triggered a massive tsunami. The humongous black-brownish tidal wave devoured the coast of northeast Japan. It killed more than 18,000 people and caused dangerous meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Although the Japanese government and institutions were known for impeccably forecasting and facing earthquakes and tsunami, they were totally taken by surprise. The eventual damage was unprecedented. It was the single greatest loss of life in Japan since the atomic bombing of 1945.

I have previously read Richard Parry’s non-fiction true-crime book People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman. It was less a journalistic narrative of an appalling crime than it is a humanistic and perceptive narration of the idiosyncrasies pertaining to Japanese community. The author employs the similar emotional narrative to study an exceptional tragedy, eschewing abstract words and impersonal images. Parry says that while reporting the disaster he ‘experienced a numb detachment and the obscure sense of having completely missed the point’. But soon he came across the ruins of a small coastal village, where he found his narrative vantage point to cover the loss and trauma in its entirety. In one disregarded corner of Japan, nearly 200 miles from Tokyo, Parry zeroed-in on lamentable human loss that overwhelmed the bleak statistics. In the Okawa Elementary School, situated in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture more than 80 pupils and teachers lost their lives to tsunami.

Despite the school’s frequent disaster readiness drills and a steep hill behind the building, 74 of the 75 students who stayed at school lost their lives. Around 30 students were earlier (after the earthquake) picked up by their parents. In an engrossing manner, Parry builds his account of solving the mystery surrounding these deaths. He questions what exactly the faculty members did in the 51 minutes between the earthquake and onslaught of tsunami other than evacuating the students to a safety position. To solve this mystery that still haunts the parents of the Okawa children, Richard Parry doesn’t opt for an exploitative approach to extract grim fascination out of the irreparable loss. His lucid, compassionate gaze falls upon the surviving family members of Okawa children. Through casual meetings with the parents, he studies their character, culture, sense of grief and responsibility in detail. Parry conjures distinct humane voices to construct a narrative of sorrow and compassion.

The Okawa elementary school where more than 80 pupils and teachers lost their lives (situated in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture)

There’s Naomi Hiratsuka, a housewife practicing self-restraint who in the aftermath of Tsunami learned how to operate an excavator to find the remains of her daughter amidst the mud and rubble. Then there’s Sayomi Shito, whose search for her 11 year old daughter Chisato is saturated with sad turns. Junji Edo, middle-aged school teacher and the lone adult survivor, and the headmaster Teruyuki Kashiba (who was not at school that afternoon) have avoided reporters, yet even watched from periphery they seem like vital part of this inconsolable incident. Apart from the grieving parents, Parry also interviews other members of the village community and the most intriguing among them is Buddhist priest Kaneda, who for years continued to exorcise the spirits of people who had drowned in tsunami. The subject of God and ghosts may not be the choice of reporters chronicling a huge disaster. But Parry approaches Kaneda and other men of God in a civilized, deeply understanding manner so as to comment (or scrutinize) on people’s disposition after an inexplicable tragedy.

Parry’s narrative gains weight by studying the trauma it inflicted on a single community and by observing how each one of them faced it differently. Through people’s varying reaction to loss and death, Parry finds ample space to examine the indomitable strengths and acute weaknesses of Japan. He describes the incomparable Japanese sense of duty and community in the face of catastrophic circumstances, while also picking apart the strict cultural conformity and bureaucratic indifference. He also stuffs the narratives with unique details regarding Japanese language (contrary to what non-Japanese think they rarely say sayonara, but often use the phrase ‘itte kimasu’, which literally translates to ‘Having gone, I will come back’ – the author uses this phrase in the earlier chapter to recount the sadly ironic departure of a tender-hearted little girl). Eventually, Parry’s book doesn’t offer any false hopes or tries to diffuse the anxiety and stress through feel-good accounts. It says how the deep emotional pain will always be there for the haunted survivors.

On the whole, Ghosts of the Tsunami is a multi-layered and crushingly sad book that pierces through a tragedy’s surface and contemplates the survivors’ unspeakable trauma with recognizable humanity.