Ghosts Of The Tsunami - Media Centre

Five years after Japan's 2011 tsunami, some survivors report seeing the ghosts of the dead.

Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor of The Times, has lived in Japan for 20 years. After the tsunami, he began to hear strange stories from the disaster’s survivors. One woman said she was possessed by 25 different spirits including a chained dog which had starved within the Fukushima fall-out zone. A young builder saw people, plastered in mud, walking endlessly past his house, while a cab driver’s fare disappeared from the back seat of his taxi as soon as the car arrived at the abandoned address.

Now, Richard revisits the region to talk to those who claim to have seen ghosts. Their stories – sometimes frightening, sometimes beautiful – reveal deeply-held elements of Japanese faith and spirituality, such as the cult of the ancestors, and Richard quickly comes to understand the role the dead play in the lives of the living.

Almost 20,000 people died in the disaster and for many survivors it felt selfish to express their personal grief. Listeners hear how, for those trying to help people struck by the tragedy, part of the challenge has been to prompt them to express how they feel. Perhaps, this is what the ghosts are doing.

As well as those directly affected, Richard talks to the people who try to comfort those suffering such as publisher Masashi Hijikata, who has revived an old literary tradition of the parlour game Kaidankai where participants recite spooky tales, bringing people together in a kind of group therapy. There's also Reverend Kaneta, a charismatic Zen priest, who has performed exorcisms on the “possessed” and travelled the coastline, encouraging people to talk about their trauma while drinking coffee and listening to the dissonant jazz of Thelonius Monk records.

Presenter/Richard Lloyd Parry, Producer/Rose de Larrabeiti for Whistledown Productions

Publicity contact: BBC Radio 4 Publicity

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o67CZ5qopV%2BisqW1wJycp6yimnyxvs6goKeen2R%2FcX2VaGhpZ5edvLTA0mamn2WknbJuwNKupZqlmQ%3D%3D