cherry blossoms

School Entrance Ceremony Amid Radiation Fear in an
Exclusion Zone Near the Fukushima Daiichi Reactor

In Japan, April’s cherry blossoms signal a symbolic beginning, a new stage in life. On April 6th, along with school children across the nation, Iwaki City, within the 40 km radiation exclusion zone, held many school entrance ceremonies for elementary, middle and high schools.

Iwaki's Yumoto Daini Middle School’s ceremony was a bit different: not only were there 33 new students, but refugees living on the school grounds and some members of the Self Defense Force also attended. Overall 107 people participated in the ceremony. Headmaster Sawai Shiro may have exceeded his authority in taking the humanitarian step of granting permission for the refugees to remain on campus as the school year begins, at the risk of being punished later for breaking rules.

School Entrance Ceremony at Yumoto Daini Middle School,
Iwaki City, Fukushima

Local sources report that in the first week or so after the nuclear crisis began, Iwaki City experienced difficulties in receiving supplies like food and fuel because many agents refused to deliver.Since early April, refugees who had evacuated outside the prefecture started returning. Restaurants in downtown Iwaki are reopening and many convenience stores boast reasonably well-stocked shelves, while gas, water and electricity have been restored. Iwaki City has repeatedly confirmed that “radiation is at a stable level which is not harmful to human health.” Iwaki officials explain that this judgment is based on figures provided by the Fukushima prefectural government regularly updated since March 11.

Principal Sawai began his welcome speech by saying, "I am glad to be able to confirm that all 33 new students are participating in this ceremony amidst a disaster that had forced many people to leave Yumoto.""In our district,” he continued,“some people survived by drinking water from their bath for weeks as there was no running water. I want you to care for each other especially for anyone who is in trouble." He concluded, "You young students, are the future of Japan. Now, we should be bound as one beyond differences in ideas, position or self interest."

Though all the new students attended, not all teachers were there. As a result of the catastrophe, personnel for the school was frozen and new teachers were not dispatched to the school, Sawai explained. As a result of the lack of teachers, there will be only one class run by a teacher for each grade.

School Doctor Informs Children “The radiation problem is already finished.”

Following the principal’s speech, the school’s doctor in his white coat stated matter-of-factly that, based on science, people should know that the worst of the earthquake damage had passed and that radiation leakages from the Fukushima Daiichi plant were decreasing and would soon fade away.

“The radiation problem is already finished,” he told the children and their parents. “You can go to school and go outside without any problem. You should not fear malicious gossip.”

While the doctor’s assurance that all major risks have ended would certainly raise eyebrows among most people outside the prefecture, many locals share this belief. We note the difference in perspective between radiation experts and people assessing the issues at a distance and those on the ground facing the destruction of their livelihood. While rumors of the dangers of radiation continue to swirl, many locals are even more afraid that rumors will destroy their businesses and any hope of securing their livelihood and rebuilding their communities.

Ikarashi Yoshitaka, 33, is one who is particularly keen on restoring his business and the local economy, a goal that leads him to downplay warnings of radiation risk.“It is just an emotional thesis that ours is ‘a city in danger!’” he insisted. Together with dozens of volunteers from across Japan, Ikarashi has visited many areas throughout the radiation exclusion zone. He confidently asserts that his $600 made in U.S "Geiger counter" has detected no abnormal amount of radiation.

Ikarashi is troubled by the fact that the milk business he manages suffered a 90% drop in sales as a result of radiation fears. Some farmers have been forced to throw away their milk, and at least one local farmer is rumored to have committed suicide over the ruin of his business.

Following the government announcement of level 7, Ikarashi observed that “residents will not listen; they don’t trust the government. The greatest concern for locals is to restore their towns and I’m doing my best to restore Iwaki City.”

Honma Hiroshi, 56, on patrol with the SDF in Iwaki comments: “I’m surprised that local people are so calm. Even within the 30 km radiation exclusion zone, they don’t even wear special anti-radiation clothes (Taibex). Even after the level 7 announcement, there has been no panic in the city."

Desperation over the destruction of the local economy appears to have provoked an unscientific optimism concerning radiation in some local communities struggling to get back on their feet.

Makiko SEGAWA in Fukushima 1

song of life

in a fact almost unbelievable to me, redon drew only in black and white until he was sixty. his turn to color, which no one explains, brought to him finally the recognition and wealth he'd always craved.

now we've looked at some ways in which his black and white work was influenced by the japanese work he'd appreciated. (here) in fact that work has been tributed with a poem, which in turn has been tributed with numerous videos.

we've also seen his own influence on the japanese from the impressionist phase that hit japan much like theirs did western artists. but nowhere do i find the recognition of the influence of the japanese on his color work.

He was 60 years old when he abandoned the black and white of his graphic work and turned instead to oils and pastels. He began expressing himself in radiant colours, in visionary subjects, flower paintings and mythological scenes (The Chariot of Apollo was one of his favourite themes). In particular, his flower paintings were well received by Matisse. The Surrealists found Redon's work fascinating, as they, too, took their inspiration from dream imaginary and the subconscious. Furthermore, he had a number of young artists that admired his work greatly, which made a significant impact on Redon.

Redon himself interpreted his later adoption of colour as follows: 'In ceaselessly making myself more objective,' he wrote in 1913, 'I have since learned, with my eyes more fully open on all things, that the life that we can unfold can also reveal joy. If the art of an artist is the song of his life, a grave or sad melody, I must have sounded the note of gaiety in colour.' Of his 'noirs' he wrote, 'They were executed in hours of sadness, of pain and ... for this reason, are probably more expressive. Sadness, when it is without a cause, is perhaps a secret fervour, a sort of oration, something vaguely like worship, in the unknown .' 1

whatever odilon (which has got to be the most beautiful first name ever) said, or what others interpreted as, for example, 'the quest for meaning in the slow and gradual process of seeking synthesis between the certain and the uncertain, between physics and metaphysics.' (redon, seurat, and the symbolists), another influence appears right before our eyes.

if redon's creative sources had begun to revolve around the communication between human and nature, namely flowers, if woman could become indistinguishable from flower or at least exquisitely in tune, there is no contradiction in the japanese work.

while the japanese may be more ecumenical, women, men, men playing women, etc., the result is quite similar. in portraying his subjects garbed in flowers, and surrounded by gigantic flowers, larger in the scheme of things than the humans themselves, the japanese artists are also revealing that space in which people are indistinguishable from nature rather than separate from it.

this perception has never been popular in the west; it still isn't. but then only the smallest minority of people in the west take lessons from the arts; most would rather find the artists the madmen and the fools than themselves.

the hum of bees

.さすが花ちるにみれんはなかりけり
sasuga hana chiru ni miren wa nakari keri


when cherry blossoms
scatter...
no regrets

Issa begins the haiku with the word sasuga: "truly" or "as one might have expected." Here, the first meaning seems to fit. He proposes that, "truly," the cherry blossoms fall to death without regret.

This undated haiku resembles one that Issa wrote in 1821:

miren naku chiru mo sakura wa sakura kana

without regret
they fall and scatter...
cherry blossoms

In a related haiku (1809), he urges the blossoms to trust in Amida Buddha's
saving grace:


tada tanome hana wa hara-hara ano tôri

simply trust!
cherry blossoms flitting
down

"Blossoms" (hana) can denote cherry blossoms
in the shorthand of haiku.1

my yoshino cherry tree outside my bedroom window goes so quickly from blossoms to leaves. when it's newly fully flowered it fills so with bees that the sound of them comes in through my bedroom window, and fills the garden. and as quickly gone, on to other pollen, other trees.

a movie i just saw a bit of, cherry blossoms, says that the cherry blossom festivals, gathered in groups under the landscapes of yoshino cherry trees, are the perfect reminder to all of us of impermanence.

at 60,
it's something one has learned a bit of;
i wonder how much i will have learned
when i am 80.

historical find

we now have startling new evidence
that our understanding of japanese art
has been a bit off, by about 100,000,000 years!

we have always attributed china with being
the progenitor of the japanese style,
but now we see that even they are preceded
by an earlier european style.

we have it all: the darker outlines,
the asymmetrical arrangement,
the blocks of color; we even see what
will later trend to hokusai's manja.

most surprising, though, has to be
the amazing foresight of the artist
in anticipating 'nude descending a staircase.'

the nest of rapture

RHAPSODY

No one says
it anymore,
my darling,
not to the green leaves
in March, not to the stars
backing up each night, certainly

not in the nest
of rapture, who
in the beginning was
an owl, rustling
just after silence, whose

very presence drew
a mob of birds--flickers,
finches, chickadees, five cardinals
to a tree--the way a word
excites its meanings. Who

cooks for you, it calls, Who looks
for you? Sheaf of feathers, chief
of bone, the owl stands
upon the branch, but does he
understand it, think my revel,
my banquet, my tumult,

delight? The Irish have a word
for what can't be
replaced: mavourneen, my
darling, second cousin once
removed of memory, what is not
forgotten, as truth was
defined by the Greeks.

It's the names
on the stones in the cemetery
that ring out like rungs
on a ladder or the past
tense of bells: Nathaniel Joy,
Elizabeth Joy, Amos
Joy and Wilder Joy,

and it all comes down
to the conclusion
of the cardinal: pretty, pretty, pretty
pretty--but pretty what?
In her strip search
of scripture, St. Teresa
was seized, my darling, rapt
amid the chatter
and flutter of well-coiffed

words, the owl
in the shagbark hickory,
and all the attending dangers
like physicians
of the heard.

Angie Estes


From Voice-Over by Angie Estes. Copyright © 2002 by Angie Estes.

so many love the bullfinch! a cross-cultural item of adoration. looks more like the grosbeak we have around here than any of our local finches, but still, who knew? this sweet little offering is dedicated to gerrie at his blog the linosaurus. his blog is the source for the top left image of this post, just part of the ongoing introductions to gerrie's finds in his tireless searches.

the fire & the rose

what are we then to do?
knowing that the world has seen holocaust,
war, genocide, and, yet, come this far...
were you there, now, what would you do? swim?,
or stand tremulously, waiting, at the water's edge?

from LITTLE GIDDING

Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house-
The walls, the wainscot and the mouse,
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of earth.

Water and fire succeed
The town, the pasture and the weed.
Water and fire deride
The sacrifice that we denied.
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.




We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known,
because not looked for
But heard, half-heard,
in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames
are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

T. S. Eliot
from Four Quartets

after-flood

FLOOD

This had happened before: rain that began
as mist — thick and windless, slow to fall.
In the bottomland, bloated spiders
caught fog and bound it; the webs sagged,
white and wet.

The second day, the creek
argued with the rain, grew bolder before
losing itself, overcoming the banks
that had defined it. Its current cut,
the water grew still, intent on rising.
This changed everything.

The third day, skeletal
corn-balk was lost. The trees waded in, waist-deep.
Boundaries drowned — the wire dead. I had
moved the cows to higher ground, and, puzzled,
they looked down on that placid other
that was not lake or pond.

The rain abated
midday, and I knew the next morning
I would see the field reappear as if rising.
I would see the fenceline discovered,
and, more, some ancestral bone, white now
as a root, would appear in the storm-gore
that would gag the creek, sagging in its bed.
I would find crows, those disbelievers, drowned
in their sleep, feathers strewn in the cattails,
their mouths filled with mud.

But long before
dawn, I would be there as before, at the edge
of what could not be sailed or sounded, watching
moonlight move over the body of that
black depthlessness — and I would be lost
as if I were in some distant place.

Claudia Emerson
from Pinion: An Elegy
Louisiana State University Press

•

i wrote about my friend midori -- which means green --
and the experiences of her and her family,
just 37 miles from the fukushima nuclear power plant.
i am providing her email address here so that
any donations you might want to make
can be sent by paypal. though her own house
was severely damaged, she wishes to use any donations
to help her family, but to also help those she knows
who are in even greater need than they are.

somehow to me, giving to midori, or giving to
the japanese red cross: both vitally important, one,
somehow, more personal.

green@baidarka.co.jp

solitaire

TO LUCK

In the cards and at the bend in the road
we never saw you

in the womb and in the crossfire
in the numbers
whatever you had your hand in

which was everything
we were told never to put
our faith in you
to bow to you humbly after all
because in the end there was nothing

else we could do
but not to believe in you

still we might coax you with pebbles
kept warm in the hand

or coins or the relics
of vanished animals
observances rituals
not binding upon you
who make no promises

we might do such things only
not to neglect you
and risk your disfavor
oh you who are never the same
who are secret as the day when it comes

you whom we explain
as often as we can
without understanding

W. S. Merwin

for my green friend

1803

.洪水は去年のけふ也小夜砧
kôzui wa kozo no kyô nari sayo-ginuta

the flood was exactly
a year ago...
pounding cloth at night

issa

1804

.夕月や流残りのきりぎりす
yûzuki ya nagare nokori no kirigirisu

evening moon--
surviving the flood
a katydid

issa

•

floods are not new to the japanese,
but the possibilities for destruction
we're seeing today have been unimaginable.

my friend midori, i learn,
is but 60 kilometers, 37 miles,
from fukushima.

she says, "First, I thought that my house suffered big damage.
However, the people of the seaside
that suffered damage for the tsunami
were more tragedy."

(below is a tiny bit of what you see.
at the link she sent me with that comment.
color codes reflect tsunami incursion
as fully explained in the article.)

"Seven relatives took refuge in my house
from the neighborhood of the shore
and stayed for a few days.
Then, the water service did not function.
We lined up and got water every day.
The aftershock still continues each place of japan.
It's strange, but the epicenter does not seem to be one place.

"And fear of the radioactivity continues."

whoopee we're all gonna die

awash in all they're (still) not telling us
yet bouyed by what they're not reporting.

it's seeming now that only rumi's right.

(above, film of the exact moment i walked through
the destroyed gates at woodstock.)

•

THIS WE HAVE NOW

This we have now
is not imagination.

This is not
grief or joy.

Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.

Those come and go.
This is the presence that doesn't.

Rumi
translated by Coleman Barks

•

AT THE BOMB TESTING SITE

At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
as if something might happen.

It was looking for something farther off
than people could see, an important scene
acted in stone for little selves
at the flute end of consequences.

There was just a continent without much on it
under a sky that never cared less.
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.
The hands gripped hard on the desert.

William Stafford

•

SOME PEOPLE

Some people fleeing some other people.
In some country under the sun
and some clouds.

They leave behind some of their everything,
sown fields, some chickens, dogs,
mirrors in which fire now sees itself reflected.

On their backs are pitchers and bundles,
the emptier, the heavier from one day to the next.

Taking place stealthily is somebody's stopping,
and in the commotion, somebody's bread somebody's snatching
and a dead child somebody's shaking.

In front of them some still not the right way,
nor the bridge that should be
over a river strangely rosy.
Around them, some gunfire, at times closer, at times farther off,
and, above, a plane circling somewhat.

Some invisibility would come in handy,
some grayish stoniness,
or even better, non-being
for a little or a long while.

Something else is yet to happen, only where and what?
Someone will head toward them, only when and who,
in how many shapes and with what intentions?
Given a choice,
maybe he will choose not to be the enemy and
leave them with some kind of life.

Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak

from Miracle Fair by Wislawa Szymborska,
translated by Joanna Trzeciak.
Copyright © 2001 by Joanna Trzeciak.