Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure

by Hideo Furukawa

  We had entered the Fukushima prefectural limits.

  We were again speeding along the Tohoku Expressway. Seemed to be floating along, smoothly, like an object in flight. The car navigation system was set up to play radio frequencies as well, so we also listened to NHK radio at low volume. Mainly so that we wouldn’t miss any emergency broadcasts. The morning news program began and, of course, started off with news on the current situation at the Daiichi Plant. We were listening to it on the radio as we continued north in the prefecture. Deeper into Fukushima. Then the NHK morning exercise program came on the air. An air of calm, the sense of comfort and familiarity, that comes from those familiar songs.

  They were like those choruses we all learned in elementary school. Or maybe Japanese folk songs. Not sure what to call them. They brought tranquility even to Fukushima. Spreading tranquility, across the entire nation of Japan.

  I looked closely at the roadside. We went past the major interchange at Sukagawa. My older sister and her family live in Sukagawa, on a strawberry farm. Thanks to her, I have three nieces. Then there was the rest area at Asaka. I looked hard. I concentrated on the scenery outside the window, and I was able to see the farm where I grew up. That farm was devoted to shiitake mushrooms so there were many greenhouses on the property. They made it easy to find. Plus, the Tohoku Expressway ran right next to it. Nothing had changed. A sigh of relief. I had been in regular phone contact with them since the phone circuits had been restored. My older brother—and by older brother I mean the eldest son of the family—lived there with his family, my niece and two nephews. I got an e-mail later from that niece saying “The hot water has finally been restored to Kōriyama.” I thought of the concentric circles. This was in the fifty-kilometer range, maybe sixty kilometers. I considered that arc. Since I have begun writing this, that being the thirteenth of April, the government banned transport of shiitake mushrooms grown in open fields from sixteen villages and towns in eastern Fukushima Prefecture. The grief weighs heavy on me.

  After passing through Kōriyama we got off the highway at the west Fukushima interchange. That took us into the center of Fukushima city, right into the area of the prefectural government buildings. Then we picked up National Route 115, which for about four kilometers ran together with National Route 4. I was surprised when the Japan Racing Association Fukushima horse-racing course came into view, even though I knew one was there. We cut east. National Route 115 heads straight east. Toward the Pacific Ocean.

  As we passed from the city center into the Fukushima suburbs I surveyed the landscape for surgical face masks. I wanted to see to what extent people were wearing such masks, and calculate in what ratios. The fact is that the concentric circles were useless. Actually measuring the amounts of radioactivity shows that these arced lines are ineffective: in the northwest part of the prefecture the levels were reported as “High” while it was also relatively high in Fukushima and Kōriyama, in the Nakadōri section, but that’s outside the circles. I was trying to determine, consciously and unconsciously, what people do in response. So, among people walking along the roadway, and people on motorbikes, I saw no one with masks. Even among the official crossing guards outfitted with yellow flags and banners, none. All showed bright and calm. What was I hoping for exactly? The guilty conscience again.

  But then it was time for school to start. We began to see groups of kids on their way to school. They were wearing masks.

  Radioactive material is most damaging to infants, children, and the young.

  That’s what we were hearing.

  About the ingestion and inhalation of contaminated materials (what they call internal radiation exposure).

  We began to see trucks on the road, more and more of them, with signs announcing that they were disaster-aid vehicles. Young S was driving. National Route 115, which crossed through the Abukuma Plain, was known in this region as Nakamura Highway. We also began to see middle-school students bicycling to school. One-third of them were without facemasks, which led me to feel a sense of normalcy. A strange trip. Feeling like brain overload. It was now a little past eight in the morning. A roadside sign advertised the well-known milk produced here. Made me think of cows and the ushi of my story. From there we entered the heart of Sōma City; this part of the city is known as Nakamura. That’s the same Nakamura as the Nakamura Highway. The street lamps were designed with horse hooves and horses. Made me think of horses, and the uma of my story. In Sōma, with horses.

  I had already decided we would stop at a convenience store. It was necessary for me. I had a duty and an obligation as the author of The Holy Family. That was where the story of those two brothers ended. But I passed up the shops in Sōma. We now turned onto Route 6. We were now there. The JR Jōban train line runs alongside the highway. We had arrived at the Pacific Coast. I told S to continue north out of the city to a place still within Sōma County, called Shinchimachi. Y was looking at the map. Shinchimachi is right on the border with Miyagi Prefecture. Fukushima Prefecture ends there.

  We parked the car at a convenience store in Shinchimachi.

  It was still early, too early to talk about overloaded brain circuits. It was beyond anything I had anticipated: they had many more items than I expected; everything available for purchase, as per usual. Cigarettes, for example: I had heard that in the disaster area that was one of the things in shortest supply. But there they were, on sale. And surgical facemasks, which I assumed would be hard to get as well, were not just not sold out, but they were stocked in multiple styles—and in large quantities, too. From the parking lot in front of the convenience store I—and the other three, too, of course—looked out at the sea. Even though the shoreline was still about three kilometers off, it seemed beyond sight. We could see what looked like the smokestack of a fuel-powered electrical plant, though. There in the parking lot we were bathed in what seemed like first summer light. A mere three hours after feeling like it was winter it now felt like the beginning of summer. Time seemed to vacillate. I was feeling that time had not yet adjusted back to normal. The sky was so blue it took my breath away. My shadow was sharply outlined on the ground, dark and black. The temperature was just over ten Celsius. Route 6 was busy with traffic, and the convenience store was filled with customers. All locals, I thought. I turned to the other three and said, “Let’s go.” Then, just a few minutes after leaving, there in our right-hand field of vision, on the east side of the road, like a surprise attack, appeared the terrible landscape of the tsunami’s damage. Appeared? Perhaps; showed itself, for sure. And the scars of the massive earthquake. The map confirmed that a river was here; the tsunami probably followed the path of the river and surged inland. We turned right off of Route 6. We turned right at the intersection in front of Shinchimachi city hall. We felt, all of us, I am sure, our overloaded brains shutting down.

  Just what had the tsunami destroyed?

  This entire area had been submerged: It took days—some ten or more—until I understood that. When we arrived things had already been considerably cleaned up. At the very least, debris had been cleared away, and one lane of the road had been opened to traffic. But I didn’t, nor did any of the four of us, see any bodies. Nor any recognizable body parts. We were overwhelmed by the sense of how powerful it was. The scene spread out before us, everything wiped clean away. Such power, to wipe out everything. There are no words for it. We didn’t just feel it, we were pummeled by it. I am ashamed to admit it—I want to spit at myself in disgust—but I was looking at the scene as though it were a great spectacle. I thought of air raids. And atomic-bomb sites. It hit me like a smack to the side of the head: it’s just like a city in wartime. I couldn’t help it, I exploded: “This scale, it spreads too far.” Said to people who weren’t there. Maybe to gods and spirits. Cars that looked like they had been crumpled and thrown, vehicles lying on their sides, vehicles stuffed full of debris. We got out of our car with the Kashiwa license plate. We got out, walked, headed for the seashore. This was the eastern edge of Shinchi
machi. It was also a fishing village. The asphalt ripped up in ribbons. Impossible-to-bend steel girders were twisted. We saw cross-sections of concrete. You should not be able to see, of course, cross-sections of concrete. Buildings of which only the steel skeletons remained. Were they really buildings? Hardly any structures. A helicopter flew overhead. I assume it was from the Coast Guard because some days later I heard reports of Coast Guard divers who were surveying the sea and the sea floor. Looking for missing persons. For bodies. Yet the flight was nearly soundless; the extensive scene carried an otherworldly stillness. There were salty breezes. From time to time the sounds of birds. Groups of two or three crows. Carrion crows. Some skylarks, too; their chirping was quiet. No gull-like birds though. We appeared to be on a beach. People used to swim there. A woman’s handbag lay there. A hand mirror.

  The sea was calm.

  What can be asked?

  Sand dances from the debris. It slowly becomes apparent that this debris is not just “debris” but a collection of parts from hundreds and thousands of other things. A house of which nothing remains except for the tiled walls of the bath; a house that is just barely such, of pillars and roof; or the house that is only a roof resting flat on the ground; a pile of roof tiles, strewn around heartlessly. We got back into the car and took off again, moving south within Shinchimachi. Stopping and getting out here and there. And then, there it was again. The JR Jōban train line. But the local train lines were all gone: only the torn ends of the lines remained; everything else had disappeared, had been destroyed.

  A guardrail that abuts the railroad crossing is twisted every which way; it disorients vertical and horizontal, the direction all messed up, angrily distorted. A bright red metal box is lying on its side, a vending machine. Coca-Cola written on the side. Legible, but reading it holds no meaning. A white box of almost the same size, a refrigerator.

  Next to the train line was a residential neighborhood, and an electrical substation was nearby as well; it, and any number of houses, had also been destroyed. A broken record lay on the ground; obviously, no sound to be heard from it. CDs scattered everywhere, mute as well. And a dozen or so golf clubs, looking like nothing more than bluish walking sticks. Uprooted plants and shrubs—roots and branches, all pulled out—withered. Or, if not withered, muddy brown in color. How far should I go in describing all these thousands, tens of thousands, of parts?

  And this was just the beginning.

  We made our way back to Sōma city. We pulled into a gas station. Were able to fill the car with gas.

  We drove into the center of the city, then to Baryō Park, which includes the Nakamura Castle area and the Nakamura Shrine grounds. More than ten of the stone lanterns lining the main approach had toppled.

  The shrine’s torii gate comes into view. No surprise in that; I knew it was going to be there. No apparent damage. No torii were damaged. Rather than the usual lion-dogs, statues of sacred horses guarding the entrance. A single pair. I expected that, too. I had seen many horse statues like this up in the north, on the Tsugaru Peninsula in Aomori Prefecture. I had also seen lots in the shrine buildings over on the eastern side of Iwate Prefecture when I had visited them to gather material for The Holy Family.

  What I didn’t expect was the pony, off to the left-hand side, next to the statue of the “sacred horse of the shrine.” By himself, brown and white, inside a small corral. Smaller than a Thoroughbred. Waiting, apparently, for someone. Somebody, anybody, anyone at all.

  The giant earthquake had also destroyed stone bridges. So there were parts of the shrine grounds one couldn’t get to. Ironic: these sacred precincts were now truly off-limits. Trucks for “transportation of race horses” were parked there. Which means horses had been brought to this area. I felt their presence anew. I nodded a goodbye to the pony and made my way to another area of the shrine grounds.

  There were actually multiple shrines in the area. It was not clear which was the Sōma Shrine, which the Nakamura Shrine, which the Sōma Nakamura shrine. I couldn’t tell. We climbed up the hill. There was a horse ground there, and a sign announcing it as the “horse pasture.”

  And so, ancient Sōma—the name seems to mean something like “reader of horse physiognomy”—includes the precincts that had been governed by the Sōma clan and is therefore broader than the area indicated by the cities, towns, and villages brought together under that name with regional restructuring; the area originally known as Sōma also encompasses the region that is well known for its Nomaoi horse-racing festival. The festival is jointly hosted by three shrines. Two of those shrines are in the towns formerly known as Haramachi and Odaka, which were among the towns and villages that were merged to make up Mi­nami Sōma in 2006. The festival had received national designation (by the nation of Japan) as an “Important Intangible Folk Cultural Asset.” So I knew I would find horses. I knew they would be here in this region.

  Nonetheless, I didn’t expect these sorts of horses: refugee horses, horses that had been driven out by the tsunami, injured horses. Some were in the pasture, some were in stables. The stables were being managed by an NPO. Young S had heard that volunteers were taking care of the horses. I realized only later that the horses being cared for here had been temporarily evacuated to a separate prefecture in a forced immigration, probably one step toward becoming permanent evacuees, outside Fukushima Prefecture. At that time I was not really listening to young S’s explanations. I just couldn’t. I was stroking the muzzle of a horse. The area between nose tip and eyes. The expansive horse pasture had been divided into two sections, one large and one small, with one horse in each. Both horses were thin. I first petted the horse in the small enclosure; he had lost almost all of the hair on one side.

  Hair loss. Easy to deduce that this was a symptom of stress.

  From fear, I assume.

  There was hair there on the tip of its muzzle. There was, of course, hair covering its body, and bangs, but also transparent hairs sticking out from its chin, like cat whiskers. Ten or so. I didn’t know that horses had hair like that, like whiskers. The horse turned its attention to eating grass. Suddenly, completely engrossed. Its subsistence. I can’t say definitively which kind of green grass it is. Seems like I should know; feels like an unforgivable oversight. All I can say is that it was “food.” Sounds come from the horse’s mouth in rhythm with its chewing, and the whiskers were all buried in its food.

  The horse on the larger side of the pasture was looking at me. As the three others approached, he remained tight against the fence and stretched his head over the top toward us.

  I assume he was frightened.

  I looked down at his feet. I could see that he was not using all the available area. He stayed in one space, the area right near the entrance, the space, that is, where he could be petted, where he could be in contact with those who came to visit. Back and forth, endlessly, in the confined space no larger than two square meters, kicking the ground with his hooves.

  I stroked the horse, but with no real idea of where, or how, I could stroke a horse in a way that might convey a sense of affection and care. I had seen the actions of riders congratulating their horses when they won a race, and I was trying something similar, but the result was meaningless failure. I could not impart even the smallest amount of comfort.

  Those horses with bared front teeth, striking how big, and hard, are those teeth.

  All this stuff: their taking in sea water, in the tsunami.

  And still being rattled by the aftershocks rolling through.

  No way to explain to them what’s going on.

  The impossibility, of everything.

  The sense of numbness that remained in the palm of my hand.

  The horses in the stables had painful-looking wounds. The stable happened to be empty of humans. Two cats were in residence, one of which was sleeping peacefully. Y had the other in his arms and was petting it. Photos hanging on the walls showed how closely the cats and the horses lived together. They told of how rich this sh
ared life was, with cats on the backs of horses, shots of them as close friends. Y comforted the cat that would hopefully go on to comfort the horses. I hope they heal. I wish I had access to horse language.

  Boom, a memory.

  I recalled a horse now gone. On the farm where I grew up, I had found horse equipment in a shed that had been torn down more than thirty years before. All I had now was the memory of metal parts that had rusted on the horse equipment (the stuff I turned over, anyway). Horses had been on the farm long before my time. I am quite sure they were not riding horses but workhorses. When I showed up, no more horses.

  Where, exactly, do they hold the Nomaoi festival of the Sōma area? Those festivals, designated as nationally “Important Intangible Folk Cultural Assets,” were staged once a year in summer, complete with horse races, riders in full armor, and the battle of the banners. The festival grounds are over in the southern part of Minami Sōma, in Hibarigahara. All that territory fell within the biggest concentric circle, all within the thirty-kilometer radius of the core of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Within the area of internal refuge.

  I wanted to explain to the horses that the radiation in the air is impossible to see, but it can’t be done. No way to tell them, on this clear day, in the middle of the day, that there is invisible matter in the air sending out invisible particles, coming out of the sky right now. The light, being light, is invisible. Even on such a bright clear day. Precisely because it is such a bright clear day.

  When the four of us turned to leave, the horses whinnied.

  This morning (the morning of April 18), I started in on my thorough revisions of the manuscript, making major revisions to the earlier chapters. Had to be done. On the afternoon of April 17 the Tokyo Electric Power Company had released their “Construction Schedule to Contain the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident.” That was like another major aftershock. At the very least, they decreed, it would take six to nine months to contain the radioactivity, but further, they reported, the condition of the second reactor could not be determined.