Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (55 page)

“Are you worried about ghosts now?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “I’m only worried that she might not be able to do her work.” He politely asked if it might be possible to see if Semp
would be able to perform an exorcism. I assured him that this would be no problem at all.

I
N THE MORNING,
the sky was a brilliant blue and the water at the beach a shifting prism of liquid light. Okisa explained that before the tsunami, no one had been allowed to surf off Iwaki for reasons that were unclear; they simply hadn’t been allowed in the water, and so they had to travel to points north and south to surf. After the
tsunami, when everyone was feeling particularly loyal about their hometowns, the surfers volunteered to help clean up the beach, and then they petitioned for the right to surf in their own waters again.

“I don’t know if I would surf in that water,” said Usui.

“But it’s their home,” Okisa explained.

Ordinarily the ocean would be full of fishing vessels, but because we were so close to Fukushima, no seafood was being harvested. I walked along the road that ran parallel to the beach. A long row of cylindrical black bags made of heavy vinyl lined the water-break. Each had been spray-painted with a number. Adachi saw me looking at the bags and said in a low voice, “They contain radioactive topsoil. The numbers refer to the date that the bags were sealed, and to the location where the soil came from. If we knew how to decode the bags, we could figure out exactly where they came from and when they were packaged.”

“What’re they doing here?” I asked.

“They have too much waste,” he said softly. “No one knows what to do with them all. So they use them in places like this, to reinforce the seawall. I was on the film crew that learned about this. But it’s not really widely known.”

We got back into the van, and Okisa drove us past the long, flat stretch of coast that had once been thick with houses. Here and there on the concrete remains of a wall was graffiti, all of it uplifting. In one area, someone had taken the time to paint hundreds of lotus blossoms, a Buddhist symbol. On another wall was the word
Gambatte
, which loosely translates to “Hang in there.”

Okisa drove down a hill and then stopped by a small inlet. We had not been parked for more than a few seconds when I suddenly recognized where I was. Off to the left were a few low boat ramps and a concrete water-break. Behind me was a house whose face had been torn off. This was where Semp
had brought me on my first
visit to Iwaki after the tsunami. We had been just feet from the entrance to Sai no Kawara.

A bulldozer hammered through rubble, and men in hardhats and gloves stood in the sun, continuing the daily chore of cleanup and restoration. Endo asked me to follow him toward a large headland that formed one of the arms of the bay. Scattered all around the front of this headland were hundreds of identical figures of Jiz
, each about two feet high. A path threaded between the statues. Hanging over the path were large banners in the shape of carp. These were
koinobori
, the carp banners that are hung up as a symbol of Children’s Day in Japan. In other locations, the
koinobori
signified the pride of having a child; here, the
koinobori
marked the entrance to a cave where the soul of a lost child might be lingering. To get into the cave, I had to walk past the Jiz
s and pass under the banners, then go down a slope toward the mouth of the cave. To someone watching from the outside, it would have looked like the earth was swallowing me up.

We inched our way down the rocky entrance into the grotto, and then we were inside. Almost immediately, there was a shift in the atmosphere. The air was moist like breath. It had a voice. Soon I would realize that this was because the cave was actually a cavern that led all the way through the rock and out to another entrance, which opened up to the sea. As the wind rushed in from the ocean, it was compressed, and it roared. But the effect was unnerving.

Endo explained to me that this cave had been worshipped for a great many years—no one really knew how long—but that the tsunami had rushed through and eviscerated the Jiz
s once neatly arranged inside the cave, along with a host of other objects that grieving parents had brought for their children: stuffed animals, bottles of juice, changes of clothing. A sign said that people were not to bring flowers or anything else, but people did anyway. Then the tsunami had ravaged all these offerings, decapitating numerous
statues in the process. Just like one of the demons that haunt the tales of Sai no Kawara, the water had also knocked over the numerous pyramids of rock that visitors had patiently assembled over the years. After the tsunami, volunteers had worked carefully to try to sort through the mess and restore the cave so worshippers could use it, but the cave was still pockmarked by tiny grottos where the statues had once stood.

Endo asked me if I was scared, and I defiantly told him that I was not. The truth was that I was deeply unsettled. I could hear the ocean outside, but I could not see it, and the thought occurred to me that if a tsunami came at this particular moment, I would not see the water rushing in, and we would all be trapped. There was very little natural light and no vegetation. The rock had a wild anthropomorphic quality to it, like it was the hide of an animal. The floor was very rocky and uneven. I climbed up and down over the boulders, feeling very ungraceful, while the camera followed me.

I felt claustrophobic, but up ahead I could see some light and I began to work my way through to the other end. Here and there unrescued statues of decapitated Jiz
s lay in the sand. In one area, there was a tangle of toys mixed in with flotsam and jetsam—a Pooh Bear, a Mickey Mouse, and a plastic toy car. Then all at once I could see the ocean. I hurried toward the mouth of the cave and stepped out onto the beach. The air changed, as though the cave had exhaled and sent me back into the bright light of the living. Behind me, the crew was preoccupied with filming additional location footage.

I wasn’t really in a hurry to go back. What I really wanted was to find a way to get back to the van without going through the cave again, but the beach didn’t continue around back to the starting point; it hit a wall of rock. I was standing on the beach, with my back to the water, when I noticed that the tunnel I had passed through actually had a second chamber. It angled off to the side,
and I had missed its entrance because I’d been so intent on getting out. I went over to investigate.

This second grotto also had remnants of the statues and shrines that had been there. The walls were pockmarked with little indentations, each of which still bore the shadowy imprint of its former inhabitant, the Jiz
, the shadows created from layers of accumulated dirt and dust. Because the floor was pure sand, this cave felt simpler and even kinder; I didn’t have to struggle to pass through. I started to wonder which cave was really Sai no Kawara: the first one that had been a challenge to climb through, or this one, which was so much easier to enter? I went back out to the beach again.

This time I noticed that off to the right was a natural bridge in the rock, a window through to the main beach. With some effort, I could completely avoid going back through the cave again. Instead, I could go through this window, then up to the beach and the waiting van. But there were waves and the water was rough. There was no telling what the walk through the window would be like, or whether I could even make it through before the water got to me. Still, it was really tempting. Anything to avoid the hot, sticky breath of the cave again.