Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (20 page)

U
NLIKE THE OTHER
Zen priests I had met so far, Taniyama was not born into a temple family. Instead he voluntarily entered S
jiji monastery at the age of twenty-seven for reasons he found difficult to articulate, but which vaguely had to do with disliking corporate life and a yearning for a more spiritual existence. A few years into his studies at S
jiji, a matchmaker introduced Taniyama to the woman who would be his wife. She was the oldest daughter of a temple family that had no male heir. She and Taniyama married and had a son, who went to S
jiji himself. The son, whom I will call Ry
hei, had been scheduled to return home in the spring of 2011, but the March 11 disaster scuttled his plans, and he elected to stay behind at S
jiji to further his knowledge of Buddhism.

As we drove through Tomioka to Ry
daiji, Taniyama recalled the days after the earthquake. Not twenty-four hours after the tsunami, Tomioka was ordered to evacuate via a siren and prerecorded voice instructions. The Taniyamas dutifully left their temple behind and went to Iwaki. In the moments when they were able to get a phone to work, Taniyama tried to track down all his parishioners,
to see if they were safe or needed help. Taniyama’s father-in-law went back and forth from Iwaki to Tomioka, checking on the property; he was in his eighties and didn’t see how radiation exposure could harm him.

Eventually the Taniyamas realized they were going to be gone from their home for a long time, and they settled into an apartment in Iwaki, paid for by the government. His wife found work as a calligraphy instructor to children. TEPCO, the energy company that owned and ran Fukushima Daiichi, authored a thirty-page booklet full of legalese on what and how it planned to compensate displaced residents. Taniyama’s father-in-law became a community leader among other Zen priests, translating the document into layman’s talk.

Now the Taniyamas were planning for a future that might not include their beloved temple. They still went home to set mousetraps, as there were few cats left in Tomioka; most cats, he told me, had been either rescued or removed. Their son was in his fifth year at S
jiji and would stay there, while Taniyama attempted to build what is called a
betsuin
, or “temple annex,” a small structure where memorial services could be held in Iwaki. It would be more difficult for Taniyama’s son to attract a wife if he inherited a temple within the radiation zone.

I had the chance to briefly meet Taniyama’s son a few weeks later. Physically he resembled his father in that he, too, had a round head and stocky body. But where Taniyama had a lackadaisical quality, Ry
hei was taut and poised, as though ready to spring into action. He told me how grateful he was to have his family and how much he admired his grandfather, who was working so hard on behalf of so many other people to hold TEPCO accountable. He was grateful to his parents for trying so hard to make his future safe, and he hoped, when he inherited Ry
daiji, that he could contribute to the restoration of T
hoku’s spirit.

Taniyama and I drove down the main street of Tomioka, then turned left up a steep hill into the temple’s parking lot. Taniyama asked me to wait while he opened the temple from the inside. I stepped out of the car, swaddled in my hazmat suit, and looked up at the large, black temple perched on the hillside like an abandoned ship.

Though my family’s temple was founded five hundred years ago, the physical structure has been rebuilt an estimated three times; now Semp
was overseeing yet a fourth reconstruction. But Ry
daiji was that rare and wondrous structure, an actual four-hundred-year-old temple, undestroyed by history. It was beautiful. The proud eaves of the roof flexed in the signature swoop that distinguishes Buddhist temples in Japan from any other kind of building. It was raised up off the ground so it seemed to crouch there like a dragon about to take flight. From the outside, the damage appeared slight: just a few cracked tiles. After a moment, Taniyama slid open heavy wooden doors and asked me to climb up the stairs and enter. “No point taking off your shoes,” he said. I walked onto the tatami floor.