You guessed it: Japan!
So, I traveled to Tokyo on April 12th, 2011 and stayed until July 5th. When I arrived the combined earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown was over one month into the past, and yet the latter disaster was only beginning to develop. In consideration of my own health and my parents’ sanity, I decided to travel west from Tokyo, rather than head north towards Fukushima. I wanted to walk to Kyoto via an old road called the Tokaido, which samurai and feudal lords had frequented during the Tokugawa period (1603 – 1868). On the first day that I headed west from Tokyo, after having finally tired of visiting temples and shrines while camping out in urban parks for two weeks, I discovered that the Tokaido, rather than teeming with samurai, merchants and wood-block artists, had been converted mostly into an highway, some of which was off-limits to pedestrians (damn!)… so, I decided to hitchhike.
After getting a few rides and moving several hundred kilometers towards Kyoto, which happened surprisingly fast since I had no idea when I first stuck out my thumb how comfortable the Japanese would be with picking up a foreign hitchhiker, I changed my mind and decided to skip the old capital and instead head for Hiroshima, and after that Nagasaki. I had the idea of visiting these two cities since watching a film called “The Sacred Run,” which documented the journey of a group of runners from around the world as they ran from Hokkaido – the northernmost island in Japan – to Hiroshima,which is located in the western part of Honshu, Japan’s main island. I wanted to see with my own eyes what I had seen in this film, in the textbooks of my public high school and in the recurring images of “the bomb” in Japanese Animated films, such as “Barefoot Gen.”
At points during my trip, I thought of traveling up to Tohoku, or northern Japan, where the tsunami, earthquake and nuclear meltdown had wreaked the most havoc, but I never went. I suppose I felt obligated to help in some way, periodically aware of developments at Fukushima Daiichi as well as the tireless efforts of volunteer clean-up workers in the coastal areas wrecked by the tsunami, but I chose to remain in western Japan for the duration of my trip. I wondered if I was selfish, scared, or perhaps just trying to hold on to some idea I had about my time in Japan. Even in the west, interestingly enough, I met numerous homeless Japanese, a few of whom had left northern and central Japan in search of a new home.
Looking back, I think I traveled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as an unknowing pilgrim, that is, in search of an external “holy place,” or rather, in this case, an “unholy place” of tremendous suffering; maybe I was looking for the “gates of hell” – the depths of human depravity – or perhaps I was simply trying to make sense of all the contradictions I had been taught in school – to know the golden rule and yet, to fight a war to end all wars and drop the “big one” to save lives. I think I was looking for an escape from and an explanation of the suffering I felt both responsible for and horrified by, and I thought I could find what I sought in the stopped-pocket-watch-and-burnt-silhouette-pasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But time does not stand still; rather, its only consistency is its change. As The Dirty Projectors put it, the “stillness is the move.” I did not find what I was seeking in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, despite the nauseating images in each city’s Atomic Bomb Museum; instead, I found two cities whose buildings vibrated with the joyful sounds of children, strangers generous and kind, and tireless, haunted, and passionate survivors who are still telling their stories, the stories of family members who did not live through August 6th or 9th, 1945, and the stories of friends whose own voices have since been silenced by the hushing wind blowing on their ashes’ urns.
After being taken care of and accepted so graciously by my new-found friends, I wondered how these experiences would shape my life over the years to come. Before departing, several of my friends who are members of the Never Again Campaign, or NAC (a group committed to learning and teaching about the horrors of the atomic bomb), upon hearing that I would arrive at my next destination either by walking or hitchhiking, and after trying to convince me through my semi-plugged ears to take a train, recommended that I, once returned from Japan, meet a Japanese Buddhist nun name “Jun-san,” who lives in upstate New York and has spent much of her life walking for a world beyond nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
Seven months passed following my return to these United States, and, restless from the peace and quiet of life back in Cold Spring, I reached out for something tangible into which I could dig my fingernails… and I dug in. Attached to an email from some friends working to decommission Indian Point was a PDF version of the flier of an upcoming event called “No More Fukushimas Peace Walk,” initiated by Nipponzan Myohoji, Grafton Peace Pagoda – Grafton, I thought! That’s where Jun-san lives. Oh man, I bet this is her idea – I have to go on this walk!
So, in a month’s time I found myself passing out fliers to friends and neighbors, spending countless hours on the internet trying to learn everything about nuclear power – subsequently realizing that I know nothing – and, finally, packing my bag, turning down the heat and walking out my door to begin a new adventure.