Japan's gods of nature
A typhoon was bearing down on Tokyo. As we sped along an expressway 250 km to the south-west, late last year, my guide, Yoshiko, was gentle but determined in the face of potential disaster.
'It will hit the centre of Japan tomorrow night. It will hit while we are sleeping,' she reported. 'If I get any more information I will introduce you to it, but it is out of my control. All I can do is make a prayer and kick that typhoon out of Japan.'
It was a scenario all too familiar to Yoshiko and her countrymen. Strung out like a levee alongside Asia's distended midriff, Japan faces the full wrath of the vast and mercurial North Pacific Ocean.
And the fault line that runs beneath the Japanese archipelago is as inescapable as an error written into the genes: there is no knowing when it will unzip and send the islands above it tumbling into themselves, and no telling whether the ocean will respond to these tectonic antics, pouring itself over the land like some hateful monster.
As we neared the city of Hamamatsu, Yoshiko pointed out Lake Hamanako, whose broad, fresh waters were turned to brine by an earthquake-induced tsunami in 1498. Today, eels thrive in these brackish waters, and the city has built its culinary reputation on the popular, nutritious foodstuff.
Not much of a silver lining, but enough, perhaps, to mollify a nation that has suffered its share of humiliation and tragedy: occupation, atomic bombings, recession, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis and, now, potential nuclear fallout.
The natural disasters — those events that Yoshiko says are 'out of my control' — must surely leave the Japanese with the feeling that they are living in an abusive household; they can never be certain that their unreliable motherland won't turn from love and beauty towards anger and violence.
But Yoshiko's calm, pragmatic approach might hold a clue to the workings of a nation squired by moody geography and shaped by conflict both foreign and internal. To the casual observer, the Japanese seem to carry the demeanour of a people resigned to catastrophe, and ever alert to the exquisite tension between pleasure and pain.
Here, goodness seems to organically inhere in everything, a notion informed by Shinto, the indigenous religion to which more than 80 per cent of the population adheres.
'Shinto is a nature religion: we give thanks to everything we have,' said Yoshiko as rain pummelled the earth and hats flew in all directions. 'For example, today we are giving thanks to the god of wind, the god of rain.'
A hotel manager expressed a similar sentiment a few days later, in the alpine village of Kamikochi, where mist obscured an active volcano, Mt Yakedake. 'When we are lucky we can see the fumes,' he said.
This expression of respect — gratitude, even — for the natural coexistence of good and bad is foreign to most of us raised in the west. So too is the unconditional acceptance of personal responsibility, an attribute which is sacred to the Japanese.
I discovered this when Yoshiko was forced to leave behind a journalist from our party who was running late. He caught a taxi to our next meeting point, and Yoshiko confided that she would have to pay the fare from her own pocket. 'It is my responsibility to ensure that everyone is on time,' she said. 'I might get fired if anyone is late.'
It is this remarkable attitude that comes to mind when I try to make sense of the scenes of resignation and capitulation that have seared our television screens since Japan's north-eastern coast was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami just over a week ago.
To be sure, grief and disbelief are etched on the faces of survivors huddled in evacuation centres and those roaming obliterated streets looking for God-knows-what.
But the shouts of blame and accusation so redolent of other disasters are strangely absent; there is no news of looting or violence, no demands for immediate evacuation and coronial inquests. People form orderly queues for scarce petrol and inadequate food parcels. From the outside at least, the conduct of a people trapped in an apocalyptic nightmare is nothing short of exemplary.
Perhaps the people of Japan tread softly and with deliberate respect in the hope that they won't disturb the god of geology, the god of the sea, the god of the fiery mountain. Perhaps, as Yoshiko did in the face of that typhoon, they put faith in their tera tera bozus, tissue or fabric dolls which ward off bad weather, unless you turn them upside down, in which case they invite the typhoon or tsunami right into your living room.
And perhaps, when the gods decide to show their wrath, these people simply accept that there is no human being big enough to shoulder the blame.
In Yoshiko's case, her tera tera bozu did the trick, for the typhoon made a u-turn and headed for Hawaii instead. But she was careful not to insult the natural forces that had set it in motion in the first place.
Catherine Marshall is a journalist working for Jesuit Communications.
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