Guilt [Essay]
12 May
The Ginza Line was pulling out of Ueno Station when the quake hit, jolting the train to a hard stop, then vibrating it like a car revving to free tyres from thick mud. For the first few moments I thought somebody must have thrown themselves under the train. Out on the platform, everything looked calm and still, and inside the train nobody seemed at all concerned.
Then the vibrating turned to violent shaking. The lights briefly flickered, and down the other end of the carriage someone screamed. The turbulence began to drain faces of colour.
I don’t remember how long it was before the announcement came from the driver. There had been a big earthquake, he said, and as the train still shock and jolted, people started reaching for cell phones. My hands were trembling and damp as I tried texting my wife. I hadn’t realized I was scared until then.
By the time the shaking had stopped and we were being led the through the puddles of water collecting on the Ginza Line platform and calmly ushered to street level, the first news was coming in. The epicenter was up in Tohoku. And it was big. I heard someone walking next to me say “Shindo 7” into his cell phone, with rising intonation that bordered on disbelief. I feel a sense of guilt thinking of it now, but I felt relieved when I knew it wasn’t our “big one”; that it was happening to Tohoku, not us. I guess that’s human nature. I hope it’s not just mine.
Out on the streets of Ueno I walked around aimlessly until I received a text back from my wife to say she and our son were safe, and with that all worry was purged by an enormous sense of elation. Then I stopped in front of a shop window where a small crowd was watching NHK.
There was no sound coming from the TV, just images of a dark liquid mass flowing steadily inland in Sendai, claiming everything it met. In one corner of the screen a map showed flashing tsunami warnings almost encircling the country. At one point a woman watching next to me wiped a tear from her cheek. I’d never seen a Japanese cry in the street until Ueno on 3/11. That’s when I began to realize what had happened up north. Everything had changed for them. Maybe that’s when the guilt started.
Submitted by: Rob Goss