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MARCH WAS

MADE OF YARN
z
Reections on the Japanese
Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown
Edited by Elmer Luke and
David Karashima
VINTAGE BOOKS
A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC.
NEW YORK
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A VI NTAGE BOOKS ORI GI NAL, MARCH 2012
Introduction and compilation copyright by Elmer Luke
All translations are copyright in the name of their respective translators.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The following pieces were originally published separately in Japan in ..rr,
except where otherwise noted:
The Crows and the Girl copyright ..rr by Brother & Sister Nishioka
The Charm copyright ..rr by Kiyoshi Shigematsu
Box Story copyright ..rr by Tetsuya Akikawa
Nightcap copyright ..rr by Yoko Ogawa
God Bless You, r,,, and God Bless You, ..rr copyright r,,,, ..rr
by Hiromi Kawakami
March Yarn copyright ..rr by Mieko Kawakami
Ride on Time copyright ..rr by Kazushige Abe
Words copyright ..rr by Shuntaro Tanikawa
The remainder of the pieces were commissioned for this book and are
copyright ..r. in the name of their respective authors.
This book is published with the support of the Read Japan
program of The Nippon Foundation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
March was made of yarn : reections on the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and
nuclear meltdown / edited by David Karashima and Elmer Luke.
p. cm.
A Vintage Books original.
ISBN ,--.-,.--,e-r
r. Japanese literature.rst centuryTranslations into English.
.. Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, Japan, ..rrLiterary collections.
,. Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Japan, ..rrLiterary collections.
I. Karashima, David James. II. Luke, Elmer. III. Title.
PL-..ErM., ..r.
,,.e'..,,,..,r.dc.,
..rr.,..r.
Book design by Claudia Martinez
www.vintagebooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
r. , - e , , . r
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CONTENTS
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Foreword
John Burnham Schwartz
xiii
Introduction
Elmer Luke and David Karashima
xvii
THE ISLAND OF ETERNAL LIFE
Yoko Tawada
,
THE CHARM
Kiyoshi Shigematsu
r,
NIGHTCAP
Yoko Ogawa
,,
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x CONTENTS
GOD BLESS YOU, ..rr
Hiromi Kawakami
,-
MARCH YARN
Mieko Kawakami
,,
LULU
Shinji Ishii
-r
ONE YEAR LATER
J. D. McClatchy
,,
GRANDMA S BIBLE
Natsuki Ikezawa
,,
PIECES
Mitsuyo Kakuta
r.,
SIXTEEN YEARS LATER, IN THE SAME PLACE
Hideo Furukawa
r.-
THE CROWS AND THE GIRL
Brother & Sister Nishioka
r,-
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CONTENTS xr
BOX STORY
Tetsuya Akikawa
r,r
DREAM FROM A FISHERMAN S BOAT
Barry Yourgrau
r,-
HIYORIYAMA
Kazumi Saeki
re,
RIDE ON TIME
Kazushige Abe
r,
LITTLE EUCALYPTUS LEAVES
Ryu Murakami
r,
AFTER THE DISASTER, BEFORE THE DISASTER
David Peace
r,-
Authors
..-
Translators
.rr
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INTRODUCTION
z
M
arch rr, ..rr. An earthquake off the northeastern coast
of Japan magnitude ,.., duration six minutes, type
megathrust unleashes a fty- foot tsunami that within f-
teen minutes slams its way ashore, surging inland six miles,
crushing all in its path, and triggering the slow, relentless
leak of radiation from rst two, then three, then ve nuclear
power plants. In ones wildest imagination, this is beyond
conceivable.
But this is just the beginning. The waves do not stop;
they recede and rush back in without ceasing. Nor do the
aftershocks, which are themselves rolling earthquakes of ter-
rifying magnitude. Nor does the death toll, or the number
of missing, or the danger from radiation, which seems to be
controlled incrementally, until the meltdown begins. Nor
does the overwhelming sense of loss and despair.
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xrrr I NTRODUCTI ON
Life goes on, indifferently and pitilessly, but life is not
the same, and life will have been reconsidered. Here, a wide-
ranging selection of writers offer their response to this
uncharted moment signicant for the double blow we have
sustained from both nature and man a portentous marker
in modern human history. The pieces nonction, ction,
including a manga, and poetry with perspectives near and
distant, reconceive the catastrophe, imagine a future and a
past, interpret dreams, impel purpose, point blame, pray for
hope. Specic in reference, universal in scope, these singu-
lar heartfelt contributions comprise an artistic record of this
time.
Some of the pieces were written for this anthology,
some were first published in literary magazines in Japan,
all amid the initial horror and uncertainty immediately
following the disaster when lives, seemingly secure and
in forward motion, were in a matter of minutes altered,
thrown off course, beyond repair. This theme is most
evident for writers from Tohoku, in northeastern Japan,
which bore the physical (let alone emotional) brunt of
the disaster. But no writer from Tokyo the uncomfort-
able middle ground or, for that matter, elsewhere dis-
tant (and safe) went unaffected or untouched. Life might
have seemed to go on, but not without evacuation packs,
aftershocks, brown- outs, unwashed clothes, empty store
shelves, worry about contamination, worry for young
ones and elder ones, and our future as well as night-
mares, depression, worst memories, and prayers.
In this anthology, Tohoku natives Hideo Furukawa and
Kazumi Saeki draw upon the immediacy of family and local-
ity, where history provides a sense of continuity, however
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I NTRODUCTI ON xrx
tenuous it may be under the circumstances; while Natsuki
Ikezawa, who himself spent weeks delivering emergency sup-
plies in stricken areas, focuses on the unexpected scope of
emotions of those who give care.
From Tokyo, Mieko Kawakami depicts poignantly, if
painfully in the story from which the title of this collec-
tion was taken how an earthquake far away can change the
terms of something as simple as pregnancy. Similarly, with
Mitsuyo Kakuta, for whom the entire notions of intimacy
and dependency are called into question.
Hiromi Kawakami, whose work represented here was
the rst literary piece to emerge in Japan from the stunned
silence after March rr, revisits the story that launched her
career eighteen years before with a landscape physically and
emotionally changed. Her updated story is accompanied
with a postscript and the original story that the new work
was adapted from.
Kazushige Abe takes us to a place where we are per-
haps most reluctant to go into the ocean and beneath the
waves in an ironically positive tale about the irrational
obsession to prevail. And Tetsuya Akikawa, in a tale lined
with bureaucratic obsession, suggests redemption where we
least expect it.
From the greater distance of western Japan, Yoko Ogawa
writes of repose and our need for it. David Peace, who has
returned to Tokyo after several years in England, inhabits the
world of Ryu
-
nosuke Akutagawa as he experiences the social
trauma of the Great Kanto
-
Earthquake of r,.,. Barry Your-
grau, sitting at his desk in New York, connects fragments
of the Japan of his imagination to create a dreamlike narra-
tive of post March rr life. Meanwhile, Ryu Murakami seeks
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xx I NTRODUCTI ON
meaning and hope in the twigs from a felled eucalyptus
tree that he has stuck into dirt.
In Yoko Tawadas The Island of Eternal Life, a group
of doctors gathers reies to harness for evening light as
they seek a cure of radiation sickness, while in Shinji Ishiis
Lulu, translucent women descend each night to comfort
children orphaned by the disaster.
Then, in a change of pace, the Brother & Sister Nishioka
team have drawn a cautionary manga for the day, and the poets
Shuntaro Tanikawa and J. D. McClatchy remind us, in the
depth and breadth of their response, of the value of words,
simply written, gently spoken.
The idea for this project took gradual shape as we traveled
among Tokyo, Tohoku, London, and New York, watching
from near and far as March rr and its aftermath unfolded.
A thought became a shared idea that was developed further
as we shoveled debris into the back of trucks in Tohoku,
as riots racked London, as storms struck the East Coast of
the United States, as a heat wave hit Tokyo, as oods raged
through Bangkok, even as the cleanup in northeastern Japan
proceeded but radiation continued to leak. It has been that
kind of year.
We wish to thank the writers who have seen through
the thick haze of the moment to clarity to offer us these
pieces. We thank the translators who responded with care
and generosity to their tasks. We acknowledge our excel-
lent editors Lexy Bloom, at Vintage; Liz Foley, at Harvill
Secker; and Kazuto Yamaguchi, at Kodansha for their
patronage, encouragement, and advocacy of this project on
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I NTRODUCTI ON xxr
three continents. We wish to acknowledge the Read Japan
program of The Nippon Foundation for its support of the
publication of this anthology. Proceeds from the book will
go to support charities that have been sparing no effort in
helping to rebuild towns, homes, and individual lives in
Tohoku.
Elmer Luke, New York
David Karashima, Tokyo
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