Drawing on personal memories of Yuriage, devastated by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, this essay explores why spiritual and communal bonds are essential to true recovery.
Through Professor Keiichiro Kobori’s argument, it questions rigid interpretations of the separation of religion and state that hinder the restoration of community life.

2016-09-20

That my hometown is Yuriage in Natori City.
That it is a town whose urban area was devastated by the once-in-a-thousand-years earthquake of March 11, 2011, and the massive tsunami that followed, is something readers already know.
Last year, my sister contacted me to say that my former classmates from Yuriage Elementary and Junior High School wanted to see me, even though I had long been absent.
Despite the long years, the kindness of the people of Yuriage who welcomed me moved me deeply.
Ordinary Japanese people live without ever thinking of deceiving others or stealing what belongs to someone else.
They are truly wonderful people.
That memory remains exactly as it was in my heart, and will remain there forever.
In the course of reflecting on this, I arrived at an idea worthy of a Nobel Prize, one that follows directly from “The Turntable of Civilization”: who has kept Japan a political prisoner in international society for seventy years after the war.
As I have already noted, this realization was made possible by the people of Yuriage and by the song “Angela,” a work by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
For those raised throughout Japan outside artificial megacities like Tokyo or Osaka, the temple where one’s family grave stands must have been a presence felt as naturally as one’s own skin.
Many Japanese share memories of childhood tests of courage at temples late at night.
In my case, temples were especially close.
Many people likely passed by temples on their way between school and home.
Moreover, a close classmate of mine was the son of a temple family.
He later became a pitcher, while his older brother gained renown throughout the prefecture for his graceful defense.
Hearing that he had collapsed from a myocardial infarction and narrowly survived left an impression that continues to this day.
All of us carry a feeling as if a hole has opened in our hearts.
The reasons differ for each person, but I am convinced that one shared factor is the loss of family graves.
Recently, I introduced an essay by a leading primatologist arguing that many academics are little more than narrow specialists.
Yesterday’s Sankei Shimbun, however, carried an essay by a scholar who stands at the opposite extreme, a genuine intellectual.
It was written by Keiichiro Kobori and titled “The Separation of Religion and State That Obstructs the Reconstruction of the Heart.”
What he makes clear is this.
In reconstruction from disaster, we must never forget the importance of the “heart” together with material recovery.