JAPAN
AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE

"The Japanese Know
What the Heart Is"
A woman who shared scarce fuel with her neighbor, doctors going around ruined villages, the sacrifice of Fukushima workers, and Emperor Akihito's invitation to pray... The sculptor of the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, ETSURO SOTOO, explains what he saw in his people during these dramatic moments. Not mere fatalism, but ultimately a conviction of the positivity of reality, because only by "obeying nature can we understand much more."

BY CARLO DIGNOLA

Etsuro Sotoo, who has been working for 30 years on the completion of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia Basilica, Antoni Gaudì's masterpiece, is Japanese. We were struck during these weeks by the tragedy that has fallen upon his people, which revealed as surprisingly near and similar men of cultures and feeling that seemed far apart. We were moved by the dramatic nature of the news, and more: watching the Japanese mothers running, with their children hanging from their shoulders, made us see them as less distant and foreign.
"Whether we are Japanese, African, or Italian," Sotoo says, "God has put something in the depth of our hearts. Usually, we don't understand what it is that unites us, but when great tragedies like this happen, we feel that someone has put the same thing in the depths of all our hearts. This is why, suddenly, we find ourselves able to communicate more easily. It is the same thing that happens when we meet beauty. In that case, too, we realize that we feel things in the same way. If, instead, nothing tragic or terribly beautiful happens to us, in day-to-day life we are not aware of it; we forget it."
You Japanese express sorrow with a sobriety, a composure that is astounding for us.
When you feel sorrow, just as when you feel great joy, or when you come across things that are true, words fail you. When you see someone who has lost everything, who has seen his family disappear, there is nothing you can say. It is only when you look these people in the eye that you understand their sorrow, a sorrow that cannot be exteriorized. They don't need to open their mouths. At times, we think that everything can be expressed, must be expressed, but it's not true. What you want to know, you must understand before it is said.

What is dignity for the Japanese?
Dignity is you. If you lose your dignity, you lose yourself.

Who gives you this profound sense of what you are?
The One who creates you. We exist, but without dignity we can't truly live. Even a society, or a State, can't really live without it. This is what history tells us. The samurai is the man who gives his whole life to defend his dignity and that of the other men, and he knows how to do it. His dignity is more important than his life. Actually, it is the same for a monk.

Talking of samurai, there were a few score workers who volunteered to work on the cooling of the four central reactors at Fukushima, putting their lives on the line so as to save half of Japan.
I followed the story of one of these workers, whose family had been hit by the tsunami; his wife and small child were evacuated and they no longer have a house. He went on working in the center, on the reactors. A journalist asked the woman, "Do you realize that you may never see your husband again?" She answered that she was proud of what he was doing. It is obviously a drama; the whole world is hoping that those men will survive. That man put his life on the line to save the entire population but, deep down, what he wants to save is his family, and his family knows it, and will be bound to him for all their lives, whatever happens to him.

In dramatic moments, people learn to help each other again, forgetting about their own business for a time.
The news reports of these past days have shown a woman wandering around for miles and miles, looking for paraffin to light the stove for her family, because she had children at home who were shivering with cold. That woman found a little fuel, but it was not enough to last the night, so she made her calculations, and instead of keeping the stove burning all night, she lit it for an hour and saved up an hour's worth of paraffin for the following day. So she saved a liter and shared it with her neighbor. This is intelligence. Intelligence is not stealing what I can from my neighbor, but sharing what I have with him. Sharing and co-existing–this is intelligence.

Is it true that for the Japanese the "I" has little value, but the "we" is more important?
No. The "I" counts a lot, but you are part of a community, a family, part of society; you don't exist except as part of something else. This, once again, is dignity–I cannot be myself without the others.

What can keep a people so strongly united? A tradition?
The Japanese, as is well known, are not Catholics, but they know what the heart is, they know what love is. A doctor goes around the ruined villages, visits the wounded in the hospitals, and helps everyone; they are people who have nothing left and he doesn't know any of them. Why does he do it? It's a mystery. He challenges death. Why? A mystery. But we are men, and we do it. This idea of thinking of others and feeling for them is in Japanese education. I was watching the volunteer doctors after the tsunami. The first thing they do is greet the sick. No matter how tragic the situation may be, that bow means thinking of others, because what has happened to them today may happen to me tomorrow. Just as I, a sculptor, must ask permission from the stone before beginning to sculpt it, so they must bow to those wounded and injured before treating them.

Hiroshima, Fukushima... Why is Japan always the first to experience in its own skin the fear and the most atrocious ruination that our world has in store? Have you asked yourself this?
Why should you travel and stay awake at night writing? Why must someone else care for his family or his fraternity? Why? Because that's what's asked of you. At times, I ask myself why the Japanese don't abandon Japan. There are all those typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis, and, despite all that, they love Japan. A mother or a father who have a handicapped child... Why don't they abandon him? Because they love him. Think of a newborn child who can do nothing for himself; everyone loves him more, because we feel that it is necessary.

What is nature for you Japanese? Do you not curse it when it reveals such an evil face?
If we were to think that nature is evil, we would not be able to think that we ourselves are nature. Westerners think that nature is something to be mastered, to be civilized. The Japanese think instead that if we are unable to live in harmony with nature, then we would no longer exist. The tsunami is a natural phenomenon; it is not something to be resisted; by obeying we can understand much more. Technology can advance only along with nature; if we don't obey nature, we cannot advance. I was watching on television a woman who had been looking for her family for five days, going around the ruined city without a car, without water, without anything at all, asking people, one by one, in the hope of finding them. Where does she get this strength from, this love? And when she finally discovers that her dear ones are dead, what can she do? Scream? Rebel? No, accept reality.

Does not this attitude risk being blind fatalism, revealing, even in a secularized society, the Shintoist mentality?
No. We Japanese know that nature never forgives. The fault is ours for not imagining that nature was so great and strong.

More than fatalism, you are saying, it is the acknowledgment of a fact that we forget: that we are nothing. So what do you call this attitude of yours? Realism?
Yes. The only thing we can do is to learn from reality. We have to obey nature and, within our limitations, do all we can; this is Japan.

In your culture, is there the idea of an ultimate positivity of reality; of something that can hold despite the disasters man meets?
Positivity is what we are trying to say–accepting what we have to face. Man can and must do all he can, but he must also recognize his limits. You cannot stand up directly to nature. As far as I know, the only Westerner who understood this, though, was Gaudì. Recently, I was reflecting on this fact: that we ourselves are nature. This does not mean that we are merely a piece of nature, and yet.... Beauty is the light and the splendor of truth, but this light, this splendor is us, men.

In the most crucial moment of the nuclear crisis, Emperor Akihito appeared on television–something that has never happened before–and told his people that the moment had come to pray. What does this mean for you?
To pray and to join together, to join together and celebrate. All Japanese look at what has hit them and share the sorrow of those in tears.

That is not our way of praying.
You are right, it's different. The Emperor is the symbol of Japan, and everyone listens to him. What he is telling everyone is: "Let's get together." For us, praying is part of doing. You cannot say, "I have prayed, that's enough." No. You have to do as well. As I wrote in my little book, Vertical Freedom, which has just come out in Spain, any work at all, if done in a dignified way, is a form of prayer.

Since you became a Christian, do you look at these things differently?
Even before I became a Christian, this was how I felt. Someone who helps feels that to help is what he himself most needs. A sick person needs a doctor, certainly, but the greatest need is what the doctor feels: to help others. I understand all this clearly because of my conversion. If I hadn't become a Christian, I would not have understood it.

In your culture does the concept of hope exist?
Yes, it always has. People who survived the tsunami cannot but start off again from that. Japanese people speak much of hope; it is something which is natural for someone who is alive, but it is not easy truly to understand it. At times, hope can be something somewhat material, or a limited feeling... Thanks to my conversion, I have understood that hope, and faith, and charity are joined.