…the earthquake also had quieter consequences that didn’t make headlines. In the London Review of Books, Richard Lloyd Parry investigates a peculiar phenomenon revealed in the aftermath of the storm. His piece is called “Ghosts of the Tsunami.”
RICHARD LLOYD PARRY: People reported neighbors – neighbors who died in the tsunami – appearing at their houses and coming and sitting down in puddles of water.
MARTIN: Parry has lived in Japan for 18 years and has known it to be a mostly secular culture. In global polls, Japan ranks as one of the least religious countries in the world.
PARRY: But there’s a bit more to it than that. I mean I’d got used to seeing, in the homes of friends, these little altars you find to the family ancestors. And I’d always assumed they were nothing much more than a quaint piece of interior decoration. But I realized in following this story and returning to the tsunami zone, that actually the religion of the ancestors is alive and well and very strong.
Read it all.
(NPR) Tsunami's Ghosts Haunt Japanese Earthquake Survivors
…the earthquake also had quieter consequences that didn’t make headlines. In the London Review of Books, Richard Lloyd Parry investigates a peculiar phenomenon revealed in the aftermath of the storm. His piece is called “Ghosts of the Tsunami.”
RICHARD LLOYD PARRY: People reported neighbors – neighbors who died in the tsunami – appearing at their houses and coming and sitting down in puddles of water.
MARTIN: Parry has lived in Japan for 18 years and has known it to be a mostly secular culture. In global polls, Japan ranks as one of the least religious countries in the world.
PARRY: But there’s a bit more to it than that. I mean I’d got used to seeing, in the homes of friends, these little altars you find to the family ancestors. And I’d always assumed they were nothing much more than a quaint piece of interior decoration. But I realized in following this story and returning to the tsunami zone, that actually the religion of the ancestors is alive and well and very strong.
Read it all.