Richard Lloyd Parry

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,500 people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned.0It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis, and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.0Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings. He met a priest who performed exorcisms on people possessed by the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village which had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own. 0What really happened to the local children as they waited in the school playground in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up?0Ghosts of the Tsunami is a classic of literary non-fiction, a heart-breaking and intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the personal accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the bleak struggle to find consolation in the ruins.

Ghosts of the Tsunami - Death and Life in Japans Disaster Zone

This was a horrible, fascinating, beautiful book. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while

Sarah Erle

Andrew Reeves

Devastatingly sad but unbelievably well written.

Jayme Cochrane

Beautifully written, horrific subject. This was a tough read at times. Fascinating aspects of Japanese society on full display.

Jeremy Anderberg

The ordering of words in this book's subtitle is very purposeful: there is no lead-up to the tsunami. The narrative starts right away with staggering death. 18,000+ souls were taken in the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami (the vast majority from the tsunami). It's after that horror that the author explores life in the wave's wake. He visits communities, talks with grieving families (mostly mothers), and walks American readers through Japanese culture — particularly how that culture affected the grieving process and vice versa.

My feelings on this book zigzagged quite a bit. There were times it felt too personal/individual in its details and not broad enough in its scope, there were times I was truthfully just bogged down in the similar-sounding names and locales, and there were times where the narrative didn't feel fast-paced enough. Honestly, I almost feel bad about those complaints though because the author is conveying such devastating stories of the very human cost of the tsunami.

As mentioned at the start, Ghosts of the Tsunami isn't so much about the disaster itself — the mechanics of the tsunami, its vast scope along the Japanese coastline, the nuclear disaster that followed, etc. Those things are indeed mentioned, but they aren't the focus. Rather, Parry narrows in on the families and communities most impacted.

At the heart of the narrative is the achingly painful story of Okawa Elementary School, which lost 74 students and 10 teachers, largely due to human failures to evacuate in a timely manner. As you can imagine, the whole range of human emotion is on display: rage, grief, despair, confusion, loneliness. And overhanging all of this is a Japanese culture in which women — and displays of emotion in general — are pushed out of public view (especially in the northern, rural regions where the tsunami hit).

It's a sad book. There's no getting around that. And Parry doesn't beat around the bush trying to find the rays of sunshine; disasters are disastrous, and sometimes there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel. He simply shares stories that need to be heard, especially for the international audience that has largely only seen viral videos and sensational stories on nuclear fallout. It wasn't a fast read for me, and it won't make a list of my favorites at the end of the year, but ultimately it was a worthwhile book.

I.m. ruzz

this book took me over a year to finish. In part because I read too many books at once and it got lost in the kindle shuffle for a bit, but in part because his writing is so strong that it was upsetting me to read it every day. I recall very clearly the day of the Tsunami and watching the videos as they came out, and then the nuclear reactor problems and even 5 years later thinking about it while on the coast of Oregon where they watch for radioactive materials from it even now, and bits of Japan wash up with regularity, including some invasive species tagging along on debris. Which is to say the Tsunami was an event I was engaged in when it happened and felt literal horror over in the months that followed. 

Then I find my way into the first half of this book. It's descriptions so beautifully crafted, as to pull me in deeper, and darkness swirling in every sentence. It was hard. The stories of many who suffered great losses were laid bare and handled with great care but it was all too much and so I took long breaks. 

Eventually you get to the second half or so, of the book and it's more about Japanese culture and more about how people deal with the longer term and it's not so depressing but also less engaging so I slogged a bit through the end of the book. 

In some ways it felt like two books written by two authors. In some ways it felt like the author went through the same process I did, he went deep, felt sharply, then recoiled and hid among the safer waters for the remainder of the book. I can't imagine what it might take out of a person to talk with the parents of so many now dead children, to be an outsider of sorts in Japan and spend the time to become intimate with people who've seen the worst life can offer, then come back and find some way to tell the world about what you saw. I cannot stomach it and so I am grateful there are people out there who can and will and sit and write and bring me to places I have yet to go, maybe don't always want to go, and maybe won't ever return; but we're richer for the possibility provided and we're richer , if heavier, by hearing the stories, experiences and watching how other cultures, other people, other humans handle great tragedies.

Ghosts of the Tsunami - Death and Life in Japans Disaster Zone

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