2011年3月11日から12日にかけて。
仙台・荒浜で200人から300人の遺体が見つかったとの報、気仙沼を襲う火災、そして故郷の海と町の壊滅。
子供時代の海の記憶、死への本能的な感覚、津波が町を怪物のように呑み込んだ衝撃、小学校と中学校に取り残された人々への祈りが綴られている。
これは東日本大震災直後に書かれた、個人的記憶と鎮魂の記録である。
From March 11 to 12, 2011.
News arrived that 200 to 300 bodies had been found in Arahama, Sendai, while Kesennuma was engulfed in flames and the sea of the author’s hometown had turned into an unimaginable force of destruction.
This text weaves together childhood memories of the sea, an instinctive sense of fear and death, the shock of seeing the tsunami swallow an entire town like a monster, and prayers for those stranded at the local elementary and junior high schools.
It is a personal requiem written in the immediate aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
今、仙台の荒浜で溺れて死亡したと見られる、２００人から３００人の遺体が見つかった、と。
2011-03-11
荒浜というのは、私の町の川向かい。
…津波に襲われている名取川が映し出された時に、最初に現れた映像の町。
子供の頃に船で川を渡って波打ち際で足先をくいくいして舌平目を一杯取ったり、中学生時代には友人たちとハマグリを取って、その場で、ガンガンに火を起こし焼いて食べた海。

やっぱり、阪神大震災の時と同じ、時間が経つほどに…。
2011-03-11
私の無二の親友だったO君の実家が在る気仙沼が、信じられないほどの火の海になっている。…。
父上は気仙沼市役所の課長をしていた…。
高校生の時に泊りがけで遊びに行った。
気仙沼と言うのはとても美しいリアス式海岸と、素晴らしく美しく青い海が在る街。
森の様な場所を抜けると目の前に信じ難い程に美しい海が広がっていて、高校生だった僕はその美しさに息をのんだ。

鎮魂歌。
2011-03-12
子供の頃、夏が待ち遠しかった。
辛い家庭に育った子供には、毎日が青空の夏が待ち遠しかったのだ。
毎日が泳ぎ。
だから47回もハワイに行ったのだろう。
長谷工のペエペエ社員だった時は、夏は水着とタオルを持って会社に行っていた。
必ず時間を作って扇町公園に在った大阪プール…。
競泳大会用のスタンド付きの50ｍ×８レーンの屋外プール。
隣には大会開催用の飛び込みプールを併設されていた。
勿論、水深は深いから足は着かない。

命知らずの悪ガキたちは平気で遥か遠くまで泳いで行くのだが、私は、いつも、或る時点で、説明の着かない恐怖を感じて、そこから先には行かなかった…。
本能的に…。
使命を果たすまでは死ねない…。
君子危うきに近寄らず。

私の海は波が荒い事で有名で、子供の頃は、仙台からの海水浴客が、毎年、一人は死んでいた。
数日後に港の魚市場のコンクリートの上に上げられていた、マンボウの様に膨れ上がった水死体を見た事もある。

コクトーか誰かが詩の中で書いていた言葉だが、水…。
温かい時には親しみを感じるが、冷たい時には孤独を感じる…。
砂浜から直ぐの荒波を過ぎて沖合に泳ぎ出した或る地点で私が必ず感じていた感覚は、まさに、これだった。

説明のつかない孤独、殆ど恐怖に近い孤独…。
わたしの耳は貝の殻、海の響きを懐かしむ、というのは、海を見ている時の感覚。
砂浜での感覚なのだ。
遥かに沖合に出て行くと、一瞬、その感覚を強烈に感じるのだが、私は、何時も、その後に、底知れぬ恐怖を感じた…。
その地点で必ず引き返した。

これは何か不慮の事が起きても…。
足がつるとか…。
砂浜まで帰れる距離を本能的に測っていたとも言えるのだが。

その海が、昨日、誰も見た事がない創世記の様な姿を現して、私が生まれ育った町を湿舌を持った怪物の様にひとのみにしてしまった。

日付が変わって、私が通った小学校、中学校は無事で、そこで２,000人の人たちが、あたり一面の水びたしの中、救助を待っているとＮＨＫが伝えた。

この場から飛んで行きたいと思っても私には何も出来ない。
眠る事しかできない。
3時間も眠らずに目を覚ました。
風呂に入った。
出来る事は、ただ、こうして鎮魂歌を書くことだけだと。

今、小学校に、瓦礫をかき分けて自衛隊が救助に向かっている！と

Just now, they said that 200 to 300 bodies believed to have drowned have been found in Arahama, Sendai.
March 11, 2011
Arahama is the town across the river from my town.
…It was the first town shown when the footage of the Natori River being struck by the tsunami appeared.
It was the sea where, as a child, I crossed the river by boat and caught many soles by wiggling my toes at the water’s edge, and where, as a junior high school student, I gathered clams with my friends and lit a blazing fire on the spot to grill and eat them.

Just as in the Great Hanshin Earthquake, after all, the more time passes….
March 11, 2011
Kesennuma, where the family home of O, my one and only best friend, is located, has become an unbelievable sea of fire.
…His father was a section chief at Kesennuma City Hall….
When I was in high school, I went there and stayed over.
Kesennuma was a town with a very beautiful ria coast and a wonderfully beautiful blue sea.
When one came out of what felt like a forest, an unbelievably beautiful sea spread out before one’s eyes, and I, a high school boy then, was breathless at its beauty.

Requiem.
March 12, 2011
When I was a child, I could hardly wait for summer.
For a child raised in a painful home, the blue-sky days of summer were what I longed for.
Every day meant swimming.
That is probably why I went to Hawaii forty-seven times.
When I was a low-ranking employee at Haseko, I would go to work in summer carrying a swimsuit and a towel.
I always made time to go to the Osaka Pool that used to stand in Ogimachi Park….
It was an outdoor 50-meter, 8-lane pool with stands for swimming competitions.
Next to it there was also a diving pool for tournaments.
Naturally, it was so deep that one could not touch the bottom.

The reckless boys, who feared nothing, would casually swim far, far away, but I always felt, at a certain point, an unexplainable fear, and never went any farther than that….
Instinctively….
I could not die before fulfilling my mission….
A wise man does not approach danger.

The sea of my hometown was famous for its rough waves, and when I was a child, every year at least one swimmer from Sendai would die there.
I even saw, a few days later, the bloated corpse of a drowning victim, swollen like a sunfish, laid out on the concrete of the fish market at the harbor.

It was a line written by Cocteau, or someone, in a poem, but water….
When it is warm, one feels familiarity.
When it is cold, one feels loneliness….
At a certain point after passing the rough waves just beyond the beach and swimming offshore, the feeling I would always experience was exactly that.

An unexplainable loneliness, a loneliness almost like fear….
“My ear is a shell, longing for the echo of the sea,” is the feeling one has while looking at the sea.
It is the feeling one has on the beach.
When I went far offshore, I would for an instant feel that sensation intensely, but afterward I would always feel an unfathomable fear….
At that point I always turned back.

It may also be said that, in case something unforeseen happened….
A cramp, for example….
I was instinctively measuring whether it was still a distance from which I could return to the beach.

And that sea, yesterday, revealed a 모습 like Genesis that no one had ever seen, and swallowed in one gulp the town where I was born and raised, like a monster with a wet tongue.

After the date changed, NHK reported that the elementary school and junior high school I had attended were safe, and that 2,000 people there were waiting to be rescued in a vast expanse of floodwater.

Even if I wanted to fly there from here, there was nothing I could do.
All I could do was sleep.
I woke up after less than three hours of sleep.
I took a bath.
The only thing I could do, I thought, was to write this requiem.

Now they are saying that the Self-Defense Forces are making their way through the debris toward the elementary school to rescue them!