Translation of Matsuyama Kenichi's first book "Haisha" - Part 1 (March 11 Earthquake & Tsunami Crisis)

This is the first part of a series of translations of Matsuyama Kenichi's first book "Haisha". Of course, it will be impossible for me to translate the whole book due to time constraints so I'll be sharing selected pieces of his essays which I find interesting. To begin with, this is how Matsuyama described what he was doing on the day when the March 11 earthquake and tsunami crisis struck two years ago. He also made a brief reference to his wife Koyuki and where she was at that time. Note that all his essays were written from his viewpoint so "I" refers to him.

Please do not reproduce this translation without my permission but you may share the link to this post on your own blog or other social media avenues. Thank you very much for your cooperation in this. 

Hope that you enjoy reading this! :-)

11 March 2011 Friday
At that time, I was watching a movie at home. The movie was titled "Seppuku" (*This is a 1962 movie starring Nakadai Tatsuya.)

The lead character had a son-in-law who was a poor samurai who had to go to the extent of selling his sword which was regarded as very important to samurais, in order to get money to buy medicine for his sickly wife. However, there came a day when the medicine ran out. The samurai then heard a rumour from someone that there was this feudal lord who gave out money to samurais who asked to commit suicide at his garden because he didn't want them to dirty his place. Viewing this as a means to get money for his wife's medicine, the samurai then headed to the feudal lord's mansion.

However, the feudal lord's minister saw through the samurai's intention of obtaining money through the scam even though he had no intention of killing himself. As such, the minister agreed to this request. This made the samurai flustered as he tried to get out of this fix by asking for the money first before returning to commit suicide. The minister refused the request and demanded that the samurai must honour his request. Due to the fact that the samurai had already sold his real sword, he had no choice but to use the bamboo sword he was carrying to cut his stomach. However, there was no way he would have been able to kill himself with that. In the end, the samurai's request for a beheading by the minister was rejected and he resorted to biting his tongue to end his life. (*samurais could ask for someone to behead them from the back in order to reduce their suffering during a suicide.)

This was the first time I saw scenes as painful as these which made me look away from the screen. Due to the fact that the medicine didn't get to his wife, the lead character lost two family members at the same time i.e. his daughter and son-in-law. As a result, he headed to the feudal lord's mansion alone to take revenge.

Just then, I felt some shaking which I had never felt before.
It was an earthquake.
It was huge.

I opened my window and went out to the balcony. The electrical post was shaking and the electricity lines were dancing in waves. As it was still shaking, I was worried that my house will collapse any minute and had the instant thought of jumping downstairs from my balcony but I didn't do that. Instead, I calmed down a little and ran out of my apartment building. Due to the tremors and subsequent giddiness I felt, I was unable to move for a while.

After recovering from the giddiness, I went back to my apartment and found that my cabinet had fallen to the floor and my drawers were all open. While trying to tidy things up, I found the wooden sword which I had not been able to find earlier. In order to find out more about the earthquake which just opened, I turned on the TV where there was an earthquake notification that a 5.0 earthquake had hit Tokyo even though this earthquake felt much stronger than any of those which I had experienced so far. I had not eaten anything since waking up that morning and started to feel hungry. People still feel hunger no matter what situation they are in.

I was afraid to stay at home alone and decided to go out towards the train station. At the same time, people around me were doing the same since there were still aftershocks and that probably made us worried about staying inside a building. I went to a nearby supermarket and bought 5 croquettes. I tried to use my handphone but couldn't get through. My girlfriend at that time who would later become my wife (referring to Koyuki) was in Hokkaido for the filming of her movie. When I reached home, I heated up the frozen rice and ate it with the croquettes. It was a delicious meal.

After turning on the TV again, I saw that the tsunami warning was issued. Actually, the tsunami had already hit the shores by then and was engulfing everything in its path, be it buildings, cars, electrical posts and trees. I was rooted to the ground while watching these scenes and couldn't think about anything. My eyes were fixed on the scene of people trying to drive away from the approaching tsunami which was hot on their heels.