dogs are happy and energetic, then when the owners come to visit—even if they are still unable to bring their dogs home—they feel better too. The dogs influence the humans and vice versa.
“The dogs we received from the twenty-kilometer zone around Fukushima have owners but have not been reunited. We’re not sure where the owners are. We’ve made a book of photographs of the dogs that get posted online to help owners and their animals meet up, just as they did with the human survivors.
“We didn’t enter the no–go zone, but some dog lovers have been sneaking in and bringing dogs out. Those animals arechecked for radiation and if they have high counts, we wash them very thoroughly and have the vets check them. They are all okay. We will keep them for as long as is necessary. They’re happy here. And so am I. Compared to those who lost houses and loved ones, I’m very lucky. There’s lots of work here but it’s good to be able to help.”
Abyss-san’s Mountain Home
Past verdant pastures of dairy cows and hillside apple orchards, we follow a steep road so narrow, the blue hydrangeas on the road brush both sides of the van. Flowers and vegetables are planted in highway medians. Onions and cabbages reach the front steps of country houses. “We don’t have much land, but what we have is well used,” Abyss-san says. The intense heat is exhausting, and winding up the steep mountain with opened windows, the breeze grows cooler with each mile.
Abyss-san’s mountain house is spare and traditional—tatami rooms with sliding doors between, and a small kitchen down one step. No indoor plumbing except one faucet in the kitchen—just a “long drop” as Nikki calls it, an outhouse—no heated toilet, no bath, no air conditioner.
The night is cool. Mist spews out from between towering cedar trees. The house is a comfortable mess stacked with Abyss-san’s unsold drums and boxes of donated goods for refugees that he has not yet delivered. Quietly, he goes to work in the kitchen, making a hearty soup of lentils, cabbage, and carrots on the one-burner gas flame. We each drink a beer.
I go for a walk up the road. Beyond his house there are no neighbors. A line of trees meets small clearings. A hayfield is lit by the moon; the moon is erased by wafting mist. A V of trees, like a widow’s peak, divides the road and cuts a vertical slash in the clouds to reveal stars.
Japan has always had itinerant poets and painters, some in political exile, some just sauntering to “cut through attachment.”Now the country is full of internal refugees. As I wander back to the house, low clouds brush treetops, and a line from one of Su Shi’s poems written in exile comes to mind: “Drifting clouds—so the world shifts.”
Abyss-san stirs soup to music—a Japanese-style country song based on Don McLean’s lines: “This will this be the day that I die.” Abyss-san muses: “We have to adapt back to a simpler way of living,” and pours coffee beans into a hand-cranked wooden grinder. Nikki cuts a large apple into three pieces to be shared.
“If food, housing, and job shortages last a long time, things will have to change,” Abyss-san says. “Maybe it will bring us back to the old ways, the traditional Japanese style of farming, eating, bathing, living on tatami. And if it weren’t for the nuclear radiation, we could all be growing our own food.”
In the morning Nikki and Abyss-san sleep, and I saunter again, this time going the other way, up a steep hill. Such a pleasure to be alone in the cool mountains. A Japanese bush warbler sings loudly. They are small and greenish brown but their voices are loud. I come on a huge stone
tori’i
—a gate that opens the way to a mountain path straight up the hill. I climb mossy stairs. Here and there are stone lanterns, gravestones, a piece of rock on a pedestal shaped like a penis.
Cedar trees, a hundred feet tall, crowd the path, their branches laying filigreed shadows on moss.
“The dogs we received from the twenty-kilometer zone around Fukushima have owners but have not been reunited. We’re not sure where the owners are. We’ve made a book of photographs of the dogs that get posted online to help owners and their animals meet up, just as they did with the human survivors.
“We didn’t enter the no–go zone, but some dog lovers have been sneaking in and bringing dogs out. Those animals arechecked for radiation and if they have high counts, we wash them very thoroughly and have the vets check them. They are all okay. We will keep them for as long as is necessary. They’re happy here. And so am I. Compared to those who lost houses and loved ones, I’m very lucky. There’s lots of work here but it’s good to be able to help.”
Abyss-san’s Mountain Home
Past verdant pastures of dairy cows and hillside apple orchards, we follow a steep road so narrow, the blue hydrangeas on the road brush both sides of the van. Flowers and vegetables are planted in highway medians. Onions and cabbages reach the front steps of country houses. “We don’t have much land, but what we have is well used,” Abyss-san says. The intense heat is exhausting, and winding up the steep mountain with opened windows, the breeze grows cooler with each mile.
Abyss-san’s mountain house is spare and traditional—tatami rooms with sliding doors between, and a small kitchen down one step. No indoor plumbing except one faucet in the kitchen—just a “long drop” as Nikki calls it, an outhouse—no heated toilet, no bath, no air conditioner.
The night is cool. Mist spews out from between towering cedar trees. The house is a comfortable mess stacked with Abyss-san’s unsold drums and boxes of donated goods for refugees that he has not yet delivered. Quietly, he goes to work in the kitchen, making a hearty soup of lentils, cabbage, and carrots on the one-burner gas flame. We each drink a beer.
I go for a walk up the road. Beyond his house there are no neighbors. A line of trees meets small clearings. A hayfield is lit by the moon; the moon is erased by wafting mist. A V of trees, like a widow’s peak, divides the road and cuts a vertical slash in the clouds to reveal stars.
Japan has always had itinerant poets and painters, some in political exile, some just sauntering to “cut through attachment.”Now the country is full of internal refugees. As I wander back to the house, low clouds brush treetops, and a line from one of Su Shi’s poems written in exile comes to mind: “Drifting clouds—so the world shifts.”
Abyss-san stirs soup to music—a Japanese-style country song based on Don McLean’s lines: “This will this be the day that I die.” Abyss-san muses: “We have to adapt back to a simpler way of living,” and pours coffee beans into a hand-cranked wooden grinder. Nikki cuts a large apple into three pieces to be shared.
“If food, housing, and job shortages last a long time, things will have to change,” Abyss-san says. “Maybe it will bring us back to the old ways, the traditional Japanese style of farming, eating, bathing, living on tatami. And if it weren’t for the nuclear radiation, we could all be growing our own food.”
In the morning Nikki and Abyss-san sleep, and I saunter again, this time going the other way, up a steep hill. Such a pleasure to be alone in the cool mountains. A Japanese bush warbler sings loudly. They are small and greenish brown but their voices are loud. I come on a huge stone
tori’i
—a gate that opens the way to a mountain path straight up the hill. I climb mossy stairs. Here and there are stone lanterns, gravestones, a piece of rock on a pedestal shaped like a penis.
Cedar trees, a hundred feet tall, crowd the path, their branches laying filigreed shadows on moss.
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