Enter the Labyrinth 3

The roar of the Earth

Friday the 11th of March, 2011 was a lovely day in the small, seaside town of Tateyama in Chiba prefecture, eastern Japan. Sunny, maybe a little cool, but nice enough to take our two young children to the local park. Bundling them into the car, my husband K and I both remember things we’ve forgotten and run back inside; K upstairs to fetch gloves—or was it a hat?—for one of the children while I head to the kitchen to check everything is switched off. Most houses in Japan cook on gas, and I had developed the habit of double checking everything was turned off before leaving. Like most houses there, ours was also made of wood, and we had sliding paper screens dividing some of the rooms, so the risk of accidental fire was ever-present. It was ironic really, on reflection, that I was taking such pains to guard against fire when the danger that was coming, that was moments away from striking the coast just 300 km away, was water, not fire.

I was alone in the kitchen when everything started shaking. It is difficult to imagine unless one has experienced it, but the shaking is always accompanied by unexpected noise as all of these things that are normally still and silent suddenly start moving, gaining voice—rattling, knocking, cracking, banging. I had experienced many earthquakes while living in Japan and recognized a familiar sort of panic grip my throat. I found myself holding my breath waiting for it to stop. Usually, it does but this one didn’t; it just kept going, gaining in intensity.

By now K had arrived downstairs and was shouting at me to get under the table. What was he saying? I couldn’t compute. I knew the drill, to take shelter under something that could protect one’s head, but with the entire house shaking and the children still in the car outside all I could think about was going out to them. “No,” I responded. “The children …,” and we both ran to the door. 

Outside, the car lurched like a small boat at sea. Though strapped into his seat in the back, our son had his face and hands pressed against the glass. Spreading my fingers, I held my hands up to cover his, partly to reassure him and partly to steady myself against the rolling motion threatening to unbalance me. We stared at each other through the window, his eyes wide. I could see our daughter asleep in her baby seat beside him. Behind us, the electricity pole swayed alarmingly.

I don’t know how long this went on for; it felt like hours though it was only minutes. The ground rolled with the deep motion of ocean waves, and the power beneath it all told us the epicentre was not that far away. Whatever was happening, it felt huge. 

Eventually, the shaking stopped. We exchanged a few, quiet words with our neighbours; everyone was in shock. We took the children out of the car and went back into the house. It wasn’t very long before the first aftershock occurred, and we all ran outside again. In this manner, the pattern of running in and out of the house continued for the next few hours until it became dark, and the shaking abated. We slept early but our sleep was restless; the intermittent shaking and rumbling continued into the early hours.  

The next day we woke early and found we were still without power. At mid-morning we received a call from neighbouring friends. Aware from the local news that we had no electricity, they were calling to let us know what had happened—a massive earthquake and tsunami had devastated the Tohoku region of Japan, a few hundred kilometres north of us. Accepting their offer of a hot meal, we set out by car on the 20-minute journey. The roads were deserted, and while the small, independent, “mom-and-pop” stores lining the streets of the town remained shuttered, long lines of cars at out-of-town petrol stations and hardware stores suggested initial reactions included panic-buying and stockpiling of essentials.

Arriving at our friend’s place we found the family glued to a huge TV. Every channel showed a rolling montage of scenes from the disaster zone. I still remember the horror that gripped my core when I saw the ocean—black, angry water rising faster and faster while people ran; cars overtaken and consumed by water churning with broken bits of building, vehicles, smashed up houses, upside down boats, ripped up trees, and more. The water devoured and destroyed everything in its path—nothing, nothing was untouched by the tsunami.

Photo: Asahi Shimbun/Miyako city, Iwate prefecture, Japan

The shock of seeing the images recalled to the surface the sensations I had felt in my body the day before; the “waves” in the ground that had reached us in Chiba were a continuation of the waves of energy that had erupted from the shifting tectonic plates deep below the ocean’s surface 300 km away, driving the water to such destruction. The waves that had hit me had hit this coast, these houses, these people first. Boundaries between bodies became indistinguishable as perceived edges between land, sea, earth, others, and me dissolved.

Later that day stories began to emerge of the damaged nuclear power facility located on the coast north of us at Fukushima. The news was hazy, the reporters dazed, as if nobody quite knew what was happening or what to say. We remained in quiet shock for the rest of the day. The entire experience had been totally disorienting with implications that felt impossible to process, for above everything, what I had seen and felt in the entirety of this experience, was a vision of the future. 

Next: Whispers from the Ocean