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."
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:
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
Science Alert: Animals are Flourishing in Fukushima Exclusion Zone
Fukushima Pictures in the Guardian
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