Table Of ContentPublished by Stone Bridge Press P.O. Box 8208
Berkeley, CA 94707
TEL 510-524-8732 • [email protected] • www. stonebridge.com Cover and part-title illustrations by
John Shelley.
Cover and text design by Linda Ronan.
“Be Not Defeated by the Rain” by Kenji Miyazawa, translated by David Sulz, online in The World of Kenji
Miyazawa. “Bad Day for Baseball” by Graham Salisbury in Shattered: Stories of Children and War, edited
by Jennifer Armstrong, Laurel Leaf, 2003. “Blue Shells” by Naoko Awa, translated by Toshiya Kamei, in
The Fox’s Window and Other Stories by Naoko Awa, U.N.O. Press, 2009, and online in Moulin Review.
“House of Trust” by Sachiko Kashiwaba, in Japanese as “Shinyodo” no shinyo in Onigashima Tsushin 22
(December 1993) and in Mirakuru famirii (Miracle Family) by Sachiko Kashiwaba, Kodansha Bunko,
2010. “Yamada-san’s Toaster” by Kelly Luce in Ms. Yamada’s Toaster by Kelly Luce, University of Tampa
Press, 2008. “Hachiro” by Ryusuke Saito, in Japanese as Hachiro by Ryusuke Saito, ©Keiko Saito 1967,
Fukuinkan Shoten Publishers, Inc., Tokyo, Japan, 1967, All Rights Reserved. “Anton and Kiyohime” by
Fumio Takano, in Japanese as “Anton to Kiyohime” in SF Magazine (September 2010), Hayakawa Shobo.
“Fleecy Clouds” by Arie Nashiya, in Japanese as “Fleecy Love” in Suki, data: hajimete no shitsuren,
nanatsu no hanashi, Media Factory Bunko DaVinci, 2010. “Love Letter” by Megumi Fujino, in Japanese as
“Rabu rettaa” in Shukan shosetsu (March 5, 1999), Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha. “Wings on the Wind” by Yuichi
Kimura, in Japanese as Kaze kiru tsubasa by Yuichi Kimura, ©Yuichi Kimura/Seitaro Kuroda, Kodansha
Ltd., 2002.
First edition 2012.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA ON FILE ISBN 978-1-61172-006-8
ISBN 978-1-61172-518-6 (E-BOOK)
In memory of all those lost in the Great East Japan
Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011
and dedicated to all the young people of Tohoku
Be not defeated by the rain, Nor let the wind prove your better.
Succumb not to the snows of winter.
Nor be bested by the heat of summer.
Be strong in body.
Unfettered by desire.
Not enticed to anger.
Cultivate a quiet joy.
Excerpted from David Sulz’s translation of the Kenji Miyazawa poem “Be Not
Defeated by the Rain”
(Ame ni mo makezu)
Foreword: One Year After
by Holly Thompson
For many years I’ve lived in the seaside town of Kamakura, where in 1498 a
powerful tsunami destroyed the temple building surrounding the huge thirteenth-
century bronze statue of the Great Buddha. The foundation stones remain, and
the Buddha still sits there serenely, though now in the open, exposed to the
elements season after season. Until March 11, 2011, it had always seemed
impossible to me that a tsunami could reach so far inland—a full kilometer—
with such force. Now, of course, post Great East Japan Earthquake, I know
better.
Watching video footage of the March 11th tsunami blasting away towns so
similar to the one in Japan that I call home—towns nestled between rolling hills
and the sea—left me shocked and distraught. It could have been our town, I
knew. It could have been us racing to reach high ground. The suffering and loss
in Tohoku were immediately palpable. I ached. Yet in an odd twist of timing, I
was in the United States that week. While many were fleeing Japan, I wanted
desperately to return.
Like others, I donated goods, I donated money, I donated my writing. And
once I returned to Japan, I immediately signed up for an eight-day volunteer
tsunami cleanup trip with the NGO Peace Boat. I felt the need to do something
physical to battle back the damage the tsunami had done.
In Tohoku, I camped out with other teams of volunteers—volunteers from
Japan and from countries around the world—and together we shoveled tsunami
sludge, bagged debris, scrubbed away mud from shops and homes, cleared
drainage gutters, and picked up eighteen tons of rotting fish scattered from
coastal markets. It was sobering work; seemingly endless swaths of cities and
towns had been destroyed, and even far inland from the coast, homes and
businesses were ruined. The stunned yet stoic locals we met were coping with
layer upon layer of loss.
As a writer whose work is often focused on young adults, I surveyed the
scenes around me in Tohoku, and my thoughts turned to teens. This trauma
would follow them through their lives. I wanted to find a way to support the teen
survivors as they navigate the rough months and years ahead—through grief and
frustration, recovery and hope. I began to formulate a plan.
I envisioned collecting young adult short fiction from authors and translators
with a connection to Japan by heritage or experience. The resulting anthology
would be read by teens worldwide, enabling them to “visit” Japan through these
stories. Proceeds from the sales of the book would support teens in quake-and
tsunami-affected areas of Tohoku. It seemed a far-fetched idea in the exhausting
and unpredictable spring of 2011, but thanks to the unwavering support of Stone
Bridge Press and the hard work of so many phenomenal Japan-connected
authors and translators, Tomo has become a reality.
The thirty-six stories collected in this anthology range from contemporary to
historical, fantasy to realistic, folk tales to ghost stories, and from prose to
graphic narrative to stories in verse. Most of the stories are set in Japan or within
Japanese families or communities outside of Japan. One story, Wings on the
Wind, originally written post 9/11, seems an apt parable post 3/11 as survivors
struggle with guilt over those they weren’t able to save from the tsunami. Nine
stories in this anthology are translated from Japanese, and one story is a
translation of the Japanese transcription of an Ainu yukar. Five contributors from
or with strong connections to Tohoku have been included.
A few days before the six-month anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami, I
was in Tohoku volunteering again, this time helping a community on the Oshika
Peninsula clean and prepare a shrine in order to hold annual festival rites. The
community was a fraction of its previous numbers, but the volunteers and the
locals together helped ready the shrine grounds and shoulder the mikoshi
(portable shrine) through the harborside rubble. Together we boarded several
fishing boats and took the mikoshi out into the pristine harbor. Flags waved from
tall stalks of bamboo in the bows of the boats. The sea was calm and sparkling.
The sun was brilliant. The mountains all around us were undulating rolls of lush
green from recent rains. The March 11th tsunami’s immensity was again
impossible to grasp, too cruel to fathom. Kenji Miyazawa’s poem “Be Not
Defeated by the Rain” (Ame ni mo makezu), about being strong in the face of
adversity and compassionate toward others who may be struggling, repeated
over and over in my head.
May the hard-hit communities of northern Japan find the strength to move
forward. May the young people of Japan cultivate a spirit of compassion and
play key roles in reviving Tohoku. Tomo means “friend,” and I am profoundly
grateful to everyone who joins me in saying to the people of Tohoku: We are
with you, we will help you, we will cheer you as you take your steps to recover.
Shocks and Tremors
Lost
by Andrew Fukuda
It is night and then it is not. I feel myself rising out of the murky depths of my
subconscious, surfacing, an opaque light shimmering above. And then I am
through, my eyelids lifting, heavy, my body wrung out and spent.
Everything is white, a bleached glare made manageable only by squinting.
White bedsheets, white walls, even the linoleum floor is white. An air-
conditioning unit, humming with exertion, billows the white curtains against the
closed windows back and forth, back and forth, like the resigned gills of a
beached fish. I do not recognize anything about this room. From behind, I hear
the electronic ping-ping of a monitor.
An elderly woman lies in a bed on the other side of the room, upright metal
handrails flanking her, a tangle of bedsheets kicked to the foot of the bed. She is
on her side, staring at me, but her eyes are blank. Blank as the white emptiness
of the room. Her chest draws in quick, shallow breaths. Like my dog, Tito-chan,
after a walk on a hot summer day, flopped in the shade of the tree, panting hard
and hot.
I pull myself up, feel an unexpected heft and weight about my chest. There’s a
tube in my arm; wires connect somewhere against my ribs.
I am in a hospital. I have no idea how I got here.
For a minute, as my head spins, I stare out the window. Only slivers of
scenery slip through the shifting gap between the billowing curtains. What I see
confuses me: my head is not clear, I think to myself. It is seeing things not there.
It is seeing unimaginable things.
I swing my legs to the floor. I’m expecting weakness in them, but not erosion.
I fall to the floor with a cry. The white linoleum flings itself at me and smacks
me hard, like a vicious slap.
I lie on the ground, wait for the arrival of nurses, those quick shoes clip-
clopping along the corridor and into this room. But no one arrives.
When the pain subsides, I pick myself up, holding up my weight by leaning
against the bed. Better now, my legs feeling more like they occupy actual
physical space, strength returning to them. I make my way to the bathroom, one
slow meter at a time, hands pressed against the mattress, then along the wall,
until they grip the bathroom sink. An automatic sensor, slightly delayed, turns
the light on. The fluorescent lamp flickers above me, then holds fast. Too much
light in my eyes; I shut them, then open them slowly.
The reflection before me. It is me. And it is not me.
I seem older than I should be. My hair, even though tussled and unkempt, falls
below my shoulder. How did it grow—
No, something is wrong. I touch my hair, distrusting it. It feels coarse and
wiry in my hands, but it is mine. And there are other changes about my face.
My cheek fat is diminished, my face sallow. Cheekbones I never thought I
possessed protrude out. Acne scars litter my forehead. I lean forward, needing to
look closer. Warily, I reach out and touch the acne lightly with my fingertips. I
feel the slight rise of them against my skin. I blink. I have never had a single
pimple in my life.
And then my eyes course down, past my face, past my neck, to my chest. I see
under my loose hospital gown two soft mounds of breasts I’ve never seen before,
never possessed. When I last fell asleep, my chest was flat. My reflection before
me now blinks as I blink; yet it is an alien body.
Footsteps entering the room. A gasp, a short cry. Then the figure of a person
walks into view. My mother, her hair uncharacteristically frowzy, her face more
lined than I remember. A slight bend to her back, of fatigue and of a weight
deeper than that of physical tiredness.
“Mother?” I whisper.
She turns around, sees me. Her hand rises to her mouth, trembling. My
mother’s hand, the curtains behind her: both shaking together.
“Noriko?” Her eyes are shining now, flooding with tears that never fall.
“Mother.”
And she comes to me, clasping me in her arms. Her body is skinnier than I
remember, frailer; yet there is a desperate strength to her arms as well. And she
is so much shorter than I remember, as if she has shrunk. My head used to reach
only her neck; now we stand eye to eye.
And then I think: No, it is not her, it is me. I have changed.
“What happened, mother? What happened to me?”
And she does not say anything, only strokes my hair, my long, long hair, over
and over, as if hidden in those strands are those words that elude her, the answers
that hover just out of her reach.
