by Unknown
The battle began every spring. Even when I thought I had wiped it out, somehow the kudzu always came advancing back from the woods behind the house and the empty lot between us and the pension next door.
After half an hour of combat I was drenched in sweat. I noticed a customer going inside and decided to give the kudzu a rest for the day.
My hands were itching from handling the leaves and stems. I rolled up my sleeves and washed my hands in the sink behind the counter. But no matter how carefully I washed up, the spines from the stems left painful, itching welts on my hands. Okada once remarked casually that the starch in the roots was edible, but I couldn’t picture digging in the dirt for a few extra calories. The kudzu was working me hard enough as it was.
August ended. The neighborhood went from bustling to sleepy, but the days were hot as ever. The owner of the pension next door went to work in a semiconductor plant. His wife took a part-time job in the restaurant near the little train station.
There was bread, but no buyers. We stopped serving coffee for the season. This was fine with my wife, who now had more time to devote to Hiro and recharge her batteries. Our contract to supply factory cafeterias with bread would start in October.
My battle with the kudzu continued.
I had just finished repainting the terrace and was hacking at the vines creeping up the awning supports when I felt the ground heave beneath me. I almost lost my footing and clung to the kudzu for support, still holding the sickle. My wife came running out of the house holding Hiro.
The shaking seemed to go on forever, though it was probably thirty or forty seconds.
By the time the tremors died away, the house was a disaster. None of the furniture was upended, but all the knickknacks were on the floor, and everything in glass on the kitchen sideboard, from soy sauce and olive oil to my bottle of twenty-year-old single malt whisky, had fallen and shattered. There was hardly anywhere to walk amid the liquid and shards of glass.
We were cleaning up gingerly, worried about aftershocks, when the announcement came over the village loudspeakers. The epicenter of the quake was in western Tokyo. Everyone was urged to take shelter in the community center. People started coming out of the pensions and the crafts workshop and gathering in the lot across the street.
Other than the potter four doors down—who was in tears because a piece he’d planned to enter in a competition had been destroyed—everyone was calm. Mainly we were concerned about the safety of family and friends in Tokyo.
“Are you going to the shelter?” I asked our neighbor.
“No. Don’t see that it’s necessary,” he said drily. He had a point. Other than the mess, the house seemed sound, and we had water and food for a few days at least. I didn’t see any sign of fire. Everything down in the village looked quiet.
We all went home to clean up. Luckily the power hadn’t cut out. Things didn’t seem so bad after all. I was feeling relieved when I noticed I’d left the TV on.
The announcer was saying that a major earthquake had hit western Tokyo. I noticed the station logo in the corner of the screen and cocked my head, puzzled. The station was in Osaka.
What was going on?
We were only 130 kilometers from the western edge of Tokyo. Osaka was over 400 kilometers away. Why were we getting news about Tokyo from Osaka?
The announcer said the magnitude and epicenter were unknown. The extent of the damage—unknown.
Why didn’t they know more?
I quickly told my wife to fill the bathtub. I was afraid the water might go off. I had the feeling something extraordinary had just happened.
I left the TV on while my wife and I put things in order and tried to soothe my nervous son. Even two hours after the quake, the news had nothing definite to report, but the announcer had stopped urging people to remain calm and extinguish any open flame. Now she was pleading with viewers not to flee the disaster zone by car.
After we’d used up all the old newspapers and spare towels to get the floor dry, I finally had a chance to sit down and watch the news. The TV showed processions of cars snaking slowly through the streets of Tokyo. Many of the buildings were just piles of rubble and broken roof tiles. The images were being shot from a helicopter.
The announcer was practically screaming, “Please do not attempt to evacuate by car!”
Tokyo and much of the surrounding region had taken a horrendous blow from a megathrust earthquake. The announcer was hopefully vague: “So far two deaths have been confirmed. One elderly man was killed after being struck by a falling pot.” The reasons for the fatalities seemed trivial; the main point was that only two people had died.
Late that night, the owner of the organic dye workshop returned from the emergency shelter. He was the only one who had left the neighborhood. He told us a few houses in the village were damaged, but there were no deaths or serious injuries. Unfortunately the water main serving the village latrines was broken and would be out of commission for some time. Even so, people were not much inconvenienced. The houses had ample garden space, and it would be easy to dig pits and rig up temporary latrines. All they had to do was cover the waste with earth and leaves.
There was still little information about the situation in Tokyo. All the footage was coming from helicopters. The whole city was without power, and the view from a helicopter over the Musashino area showed neighborhoods shrouded in darkness. Scattered pillars of fire rose into the sky, isolated islands of light.
It wasn’t until the next day that images of Tokyo started coming from the ground.
Scorching foehn winds were blowing across the Kanto plain. The temperature in Hachioji reached 44 degrees. People were collecting drinking water from broken pipes. Without refrigeration, food in the stores and warehouses was spoiling fast. The announcers kept warning people to avoid consuming it.
It was around that time that the TV began to reveal devastation on a much larger scale than had been reported. Buildings had collapsed all over Tokyo and well down the coast toward Nagoya. Most roads were impassable. The number of casualties was unknown. Electric power into the disaster zone had been cut off to avoid a repeat of what happened after Kobe’s earthquake, when short circuits sparked widespread fires.
Transport arteries into the zone were clogged with cars that had run out of gas or blown a tire. These abandoned vehicles were making it hard for relief crews and supplies to reach their destinations.
With indoor temperatures in the forties, many people fled outside to the shade of buildings and trees, but the heat rising from the roads and sidewalks was dropping people with heatstroke. The hospitals were overflowing with the injured, and most people suffering from the heat were getting no attention at all.
One broadcast reported—stressing that the information was unconfirmed—that cholera and other infectious diseases were breaking out in the emergency shelters.
And as always, the announcers kept telling people to stay indoors and off the roads.
Three days after the quake, things in the village seemed almost back to normal. Broken roof tiles had been cleared from the streets. Every household was well-equipped with tools, and the minor household repairs were finished. Some bathtubs had fractured, but the village hot spring was open for business.
The TV showed people trudging out of Tokyo along roads lined with destroyed buildings and tilting power poles. The national chain of command seemed to be in chaos after this shattering blow to the capital, and the disaster zone was so large that the scale of the damage was still unknown.
Waiting for relief supplies in the shelters was futile. A flow of information, food, and water had always followed big earthquakes, but not this time. Rumors of mysterious epidemics had frightened people into thinking that staying put meant death. Escape from the disaster zone looked like the best option.
Volunteers from around the country were trying to get into the zone, b
ut the situation was so confused that relief efforts were still scattered and ineffective.
It struck me as odd, at least from watching the news, that Tokyo was no wasteland, yet more and more people were abandoning homes and apartments that seemed livable, even if they had nowhere to go. People just wanted to get away from Tokyo any way they could, even if it meant going where they had no family or friends.
I soon found out why.
Naturally, people were afraid that an aftershock might level the building in which they were staying. But more important was the stark reality that survival in a city like Tokyo was impossible without power and water.
With temperatures well into the thirties every day, asphalt and concrete became reservoirs of heat. With the refrigeration chain severed, food rotted. Urban river and ground water was mostly unfit to drink. It hit me that without constant supplies, Tokyo was as vulnerable as a biodome in the middle of the desert, or even a space station.
I was concerned about my relatives and friends in Tokyo, but I also couldn’t help congratulating myself for being clever enough to move here. My wife’s childlike dream of country life and her tenacity in pushing me to relocate two years ago had saved us.
I knew it was self-centered, but who wasn’t feeling the same way? Other people in this district of pensions and country houses were feeling more or less the same. I’m just glad it didn’t happen to me and my family. And we felt guilty for feeling it. It was because of this guilt—the discomfort and embarrassment that one had been spared—that whenever we ran into each other on the street, talk turned to what might be done for people in Tokyo.
The villagers and farmers in the surrounding countryside had a different reaction. Four days after the quake, when there had still been no big aftershocks and people had repaired their homes and gotten things back in order, I took my wife and son to the hot spring. The feeling of relief we had was shared by many, and the spa was packed.
After our bath, we went to the little auditorium where people were napping, or snacking while they watched the big flat-screen monitor up on the stage. The usual karaoke session by old folk who loved to sing ballads from before the war was, unsurprisingly, not in progress.
The monitor showed image after image of destruction in Tokyo. Every channel was running nonstop quake coverage. No one would watch regular programming at a time like this.
“Oh no, would you look at that!”
“That’s why Tokyo’s so scary.”
“Ryuzo let his daughter live there. See what happens?”
“It’s so sad. Ryuzo’s daughter and granddaughter were killed, both of them. Their train went right off the elevated tracks. No one knows what happened to the husband.”
Heat, lack of water, lack of food, cholera and dysentery from lack of sanitation. Until a few days ago, life in Tokyo had been comfortable and convenient, but the earthquake had turned its people into refugees.
Everyone sympathized with the victims in Tokyo and agonized over their situation. At the same time, the news was thrilling entertainment.
Despite the tragic images, the news emphasized that people were showing a surprising amount of patience and calm and were abiding by the law. Incidents of violence and theft were almost nonexistent, or so they said. Only later did we find out that these reports skillfully concealed the truth. The media was working hard to preserve the image of people in the zone.
As I sat with my eyes glued to the TV, someone called my name.
I turned to see Tetsuji Okada standing behind me. He must have just gotten out of the bath, because his face was flushed.
“How are you doing? Get everything cleaned up?” I asked him by way of greeting. But there was something about him that did not look normal.
“It finally came. I told you, didn’t I? Tokyo’s been destroyed. The hungry ghosts will be here in droves. Yes, I got everything cleaned up. My friends made it out of the city with their families. I just got a call. They’re coming on foot. They’ve reached Kofu. People from the western suburbs keep coming in. There’s water but no food, they say. A sweet bun costs five hundred yen. A bag of rice crackers is two thousand. But people in Yamanashi aren’t greedy. They’re dealing with half a million refugees. Kofu didn’t get hit as hard as Tokyo, but it suffered. If this keeps up, they’ll run out of food. And the refugees are refusing to pay. They even want priority over the locals—you know, ‘because we’re refugees.’ Totally arrogant. They’re looting convenience stores and fast-food restaurants and picking them clean. The police had to be called in.”
Just then the news went from national to local. Sure enough, there was footage from Kofu. It was just as Okada said.
Refugees sitting on tatami mats in a community center, eating meals distributed by the city. Refugees receiving treatment in Kofu hospitals. The city’s hot springs had stopped charging admission.
“Next time it might be our turn,” a smiling spa owner told the camera. “I feel like the Buddha has rescued me from hell,” said an elderly woman as she tearfully massaged her sore feet.
A miniskirted teenager in a uniform and cap was distributing value meals to refugees across the counter of a fast-food restaurant.
“This major hamburger chain has begun distributing food to disaster victims free of charge,” said the announcer. But the girl behind the counter wasn’t smiling. In the background I could see broken windows and a riot policeman standing behind a shield.
Okada chuckled. “The news is staged, 100 percent. Every story has a script and a director.”
I disliked Okada 100 percent. He had changed from an unaffected, masculine man with a mania for one particular subject to a contemptible mocker of human misfortune.
Still, his prediction was coming true, though not for the reasons he’d expected. I could hear the agricultural cooperative broadcasting over the loudspeakers outside. The price of vegetables was skyrocketing, and the announcement was urging farmers to get their crops to distributors to keep prices from rising further.
But who would sell food at a time like this?
Millions were fleeing Tokyo. Most of the villagers, and many of us transplants, were waiting for family and friends. Food was for those who had possession of it, and for people who were close to them.
Now I knew that a food shortage didn’t need some sort of global crop failure. If a major city met with disaster, if transport arteries were severed and there was no way to distribute supplies or receive them from overseas, people could easily starve.
I hurried my wife and son out to the car and drove to the agricultural cooperative to stock up on rice.
It was sold out. I drove as fast as I could to the supermarket. No rice there either. We finally found some at a specialty dealer. It was the first time I’d ever been there, and it was our last option.
But it wasn’t for sale.
“Can’t help you. It’s already sold.” The dealer wouldn’t say more.
Of course we had ample supplies of wheat flour at the bakery. Unlike the people who had walked a hundred kilometers to Kofu only to find food in short supply there too, we could easily get along without rice.
As I gave up and turned to go, someone started yelling.
“You’ve got rice. I can see it. Can’t you sell me a little?” The man was on the edge of panic. “I only need a kilo. I’ll give you a thousand—no, two thousand yen.”
“Can’t help you.” The dealer turned his back. A Jeep Cherokee with western Tokyo license plates was parked outside. A young woman sat in the front seat with a child on her lap, watching the shop with a worried look. The Jeep was scratched and muddy. Foliage was caught in the front grill guard. They must have avoided the highways by taking back roads through the mountains.
I was opening the door to my car when the man came out and approached me with a pained expression.
“I’m sorry, is there someplace around here we c
ould buy food? We’ve got camping gear, we just need rice and vegetables.”
I pictured them speeding in their four-wheel-drive jeep past lines of people trudging antlike along the roads, finally crashing through underbrush and fording streams to get here.
“Sorry, no idea.” I avoided making eye contact. I was about to get in the car when I glanced at the Jeep and froze. There were splotches of rust red on the bumper and around the mudguards. It looked like they’d hit someone.
I swung round and stared at the stranger. He was an ordinary-looking man in his mid-thirties, wearing a white polo shirt. Just a middle-class consumer buying a piece of the outdoor life with an expensive off-road vehicle. I wondered what kind of hell he’d witnessed and what crimes he’d committed to get here.
The child in the car smiled at me.
On the way home, I passed a few more off-road vehicles with Tokyo license plates: Hachioji, Nerima, Shinagawa. They’d made it to safety ahead of the walkers and were racing around trying to secure food for themselves.
The same scenes kept playing out in shops and along the roadside: people pleading to buy food and being refused. I stopped to watch one exchange at the edge of an irrigation ditch.
“You’ve got lots of food. We drove a hundred and fifty kilometers to get away from Tokyo. We’ve been through a terrible experience. Can’t you give us one ear of corn?”
Another car pulled up. People got out and joined in badgering the farmer. “Don’t you have any human feelings at all?”
The sunburned old man just glared at them. Finally he turned his back, muttered “Go away,” and returned to pulling weeds at the edge of the ditch.
A bit farther down the road, the same thing was happening at Okada’s farm.
“Go away. I’ve got no rice or beans or corn for you. I don’t care how much money you throw at me. You never had to come to a place like this, did you? You could go to 7-Eleven and buy what you needed, twenty-four hours a day. Convenience stores were made for people like you. You don’t belong here. Nothing at the store? Then sit and wait till the food comes. They have deliveries all the time. Isn’t that how the system works?”