Then the rounded head of the Kitakami River shows itself, where it makes a hard bend and goes east to Ishinomaki. Lumberyards line the narrow lane to Shounji Temple. Alone, I go up on the bank where children died, where ghosts clung to Masumi’s back, where the water is aquamarine, and the reeds on both banks are brown stalks clacking together in the breeze.
Two men in a tiny rubber raft ply the reeds, poking the mud with a long stick. Even now, there are thousands of people still missing. Snow geese litter rice fields. A yellow police car creeps slowly down the road, searching for the dead.
The abbot’s niece, Fukan-san, greets me. This, the fourth time I’ve visited, elicits not just the familiar bow, but a hug as well. I’ve come to see the bonsho, the big bell that was brought from the devastated Kannonji Temple up the road to be kept here, and to meet the carpenter who is building the bonsho’s shelter. It will be suspended in a wooden stand with a roof decorated with traditional Buddhist carvings.
But first, tea. The temple is unheated. We sit on tatami and warm our hands on teacups near a tokonoma, an alcove, with a scroll whose calligraphies translate “Drifting Reed” and “White Cloud.”
“There are still so many lost souls here,” Fukan-san says, placing little cakes on our plates. She talks of a father in the community who lost both his wife and his child at the Ookawa Elementary School. They found the child’s remains and he asked if he could keep her ashes here. “At the funeral for the child he was unable to show emotion. He couldn’t greet those neighbors who came, and he was unable to pour the traditional sake. He just sat there, frozen.”
There’s a group of grieving parents who meet often, but this man never turns up. “He can’t bring himself to go to the temporary morgue to find his family. He can’t accept that they are dead. A tragedy like that … impossible to imagine what it’s like … the amount of pain and suffering he goes through every day is beyond my imagination. Yet that’s my job. To help all of them.”
We drink tea in silence. This time, no parents stream through, and no one brings flowers. Nine months have passed. A child’s remains are found off the coast of Nobiru: it is “the digger’s” child. She and her husband cremate their daughter and give her a proper burial. Determined to help others find their missing children, the mother keeps renting the backhoe, keeps digging. Those who survived the intrusion of tsunami waters on the Kitakami River are getting back to their lives, living with their losses, and fixing up damaged houses and farms.
“I’ve been thinking about the mysteries of life,” Fukan-san says. “We just happen to be born humans. My room is by the toilet and the light is on all night. Big bugs come there and some die. It’s nothing when compared to the death of children, and yet, many days I see clearly how we are all equal. I mourn the death of the bugs as well as the children. I tell the parents that those who passed away remind us that we will all die, and to remember this fact; they gave their lives to remind us to live!”
She tells me about the day she went to the river to sit zazen, in meditation. “I sat there for a long time,” she says. “Then the smell of food cooking wafted up from a farmer’s kitchen—such a wonderful smell … and it was only then that I cried.”
Her head drops, then she gives me a searching look. I nod and tell her that it once happened to me after losing someone I loved; that food, reminding us of life, stirs grief. Finally, she smiles and jumps to her feet. “Let’s go find the carpenter who is building the stand for the Kannonji bell.”
The air is brisk. Fukan-san wears a black balaclava and gloves with her robes, white tabi socks and sandals. We rush down the lane to his lumberyard.
“I’m called a miya daiku, a master temple builder,” Sakai-san says matter-of-factly. In his mid-sixties, he’s talkative and hyperenergetic. “I’ve built 350 temples, and do two or three a year. I’m the first generation. Our family business wasn’t doing so well, and they couldn’t afford to send us all to high school. My older sister was very clever, so to keep her in school, I went to work and she graduated. I’ve always loved making things, so I decided to become a craftsman.
“The day I was married, I got up in the middle of the night and went out to the shop and began working. My wife woke and couldn’t find me. She called my parents to tell them I’d gone missing. They laughed. ‘He’s just in his shop. Go back to sleep. That’s how he is.’
“I apprenticed to a master from Iwate Prefecture. He moved to Tokyo and I went with him. He’d bought a big piece of land in Tohoku and used the timber from there to make temple carvings. I build the temples with my crew and do all the carvings myself, except for one. A carpenter is not fit to carve a Buddha.” (He holds his palms together while saying this, almost absent-mindedly.) “Carving the Buddha is a different world … it’s like being a priest.
“But since 3/11, I’ve dedicated my time to those who need help since the disaster. We spent two weeks at Ookawa Elementary School, just up the road, helping the people look for bodies. We brought food to them too. I’ve been fixing floors that were water-damaged, reconstructing pillars, repairing houses and grave markers. This is what the living have to do at a time like this. But at the end of this year, I must stop, or I’ll go broke. We have trucks and heavy equipment and I employ many people who depend on me. So I must start building temples again to pay the bills.
“Do you want to see my tools?” Before we can get our shoes on, he has darted across the road to his lumberyard and shop. Inside are hundreds of boxes of traditional planers, chisels, and saws. “It looks like a mess but no one else uses them. The blades never touch each other. You have to buy these in Kobe. Just three of my best tools are worth enough to buy a new car,” he says, flipping open wooden boxes to show us.
“The tools are made by master toolmakers just for temple carving. And my sharpening stone goes back eight hundred years to the Kamakura Period in Kyoto, where a master craftsman said: ‘The spirit of the blade lies in the spirit of the natural sharpening tool.’ ”
We walk to the entryway to the temple to think about where he’ll build the “bell house”—an elaborately constructed stand and roof for the great bonsho. Fukan-san questions the carpenter about the exact placement. The bronze bell is four feet long and two feet wide and is rung by ramming the end with a long stick. He tells us that during World War II, all the temple bells were taken to be made into weapons. But this bell was spared, and after twenty years it was returned to the Kannonji Temple. “But here it is and we will make a beautiful house for it,” he says.
Sakai-san stands in one place and makes the motion of ringing the bell, then another place and tries again. He and Fukan-san laugh. “Well, I’m not sure where to put it yet,” he says, looking suddenly distracted, as if remembering all the temples he has yet to build. “But we’ll find the right place and make beautiful carvings for it. Maybe it can be built next year … or the year after …”
Fukan-san looks stunned. She’d hoped it would be completed in a few months. But turning to me she smiles: “You gave us money for this structure. As soon as it is in place, we will have a special ceremony. Some say the sound of the bell signifies mujo, impermanence. Others say it is the voice of the Buddha. Whenever the small house is completed, you must come and ring the bell!”