"God's Door Opened!"/Interviews with Kobe Residents
Winter 1996

Following is an anthology of comments and accounts by those who suffered in the Great Hanshin Earthquake. It was compiled by Takashi Tsumura, a writer and practitioner of Chinese healing who lives in Kobe. While the quake, its effects and aftermath were extensively reported in the mass media, this is different in the way it presents a collection of personal views and perspectives. Tsumura gathered the comments for a year, beginning directly after the quake struck.

• voices-1 [Memories]
• voices-2 ["God's Door Opened!"]
• voices-3 [Water-Fetching Days]
• An assembly from midnight to dawn on January 17, 1996
  A memorial ceremony followed by a discussion at the Sugawara Market Place in Nagata

voices-1 [Memories]

• Having nightmares and crying in fear in one's sleep are ways of reducing anxiety. They help reduce people's stress.
  [Dr. Taniguchi, Dept. Of Psychoneurology, Osaka Kaisei Hospital]
  
  
• The nightmares they have aren't necessarily of their actual earthquake experiences. More often than not, they're about being robbed, about ghosts and fires, whatever scared these people most before the earthquake.
  [Article in The Kobe Shimbun, April 11, 1995]
  
  
• Children play "The Big One" all the time. By reliving the day of the quake and the following days when they had to fetch water in containers, they learn to live with the memories they so much want to forget.
  [A childcare volunteer]
  
  
• When it comes to mental self-care, children seem to be the stronger. Perhaps it's because they replay the exerience among themselves.
  [A pediatrician, Kobe Central Civic Hospital]
  
  
  Evacuation drills serve as occasions to "replay the experience." This is role-playing. By giving themselves the chance to replay what occurred again and again, a form of healing takes place. Not to forget, but to confront what happened; and to not stop seeking the true meaning of the event helps in the whole city's healing.

  
  
  

• They should have kept Sannomiya Station in its ruined condition. It would have been like the Hiroshima Dome.
  [A businessman interviewed on a temporary shuttle bus service]
  
  
• I went around insisting that the collapsed highway should be preserved and converted into a museum. No one listened. But look at the Tower of Pisa and all the tourism revenue it generates. Think of a leaning Kobe Flower Road Building, or the Meiji Life Building!
  [An artist]
  
  
• When I see all these superficial reconstruction projects I want to shout, "No, wait!" I get so frustrated I feel like setting them on fire. We should scrap all that irrelevant resurfacing and start all over .... from the ruins.
  [A volunteer in Nagata Ward]

voices-2 ["God's Door Opened!"]

• I was driving on the highway when I suddenly saw a bright mass of light coming from the southwest; it swept right through me, toward Rokko. I've never seen anything so intense. When the light passed through I felt transparent.
  
  
• I ran outside the instant it struck. The sky was red. I thought it was dawn. Then it was suddenly pitch black again.
  
  
  It was the religious leader Wanisaburo Deguchi who said that "Kobe" means "God's Door." Many who didn't even know that were heard to say, "God's door opened!"

  
  
  

• The stars couldn't have been more beautiful. Even with the full moon that night, the sky was filled with bright stars. I knew then that those who had been buried by the quake had become those stars.
  [Chuo Ward resident whose family was buried in the quake]
  
  
• The moon on the 17th was definitely red. Everyone says so.
  [Residents of Higashi-Nada]
  
  
  Experiencing the great force of Nature, people were filled with mystical, extraordinary emotions.

  
  
  

• Claims that the earthquake was triggered by the construction of the Akashi Bridge have proved to be false.
  [A government statement ]
  
  
  The City of Kobe convened a press conference to deny a belief many people shared that the quake was the result of the construction work for the Akashi Bridge, one of whose ends lie near the epicenter.

  
  
  

• See, Kobe's been punished for the way we've been living.
  
  
• If the quake had happened two hours later, at 7:45 instead of 5:45, the death toll would have been 500,000 instead of 5,000. I'm not saying 5,000 is a small number. But I am saying that the quake warned us. It chose that time. If we do not heed its lesson, all those lost lives will have been wasted.
  [A volunteer in Hyogo Ward]

voices-3 [Water-Fetching Days]

• I wonder what all the exhiliration was about?
  
  
• I was in the water queue and spoke with the guy living next door to me in my condo. It was the first time we'd ever spoken to each other. He was very nice, and I had to wonder why we'd never spoken before.
  
  
• While I was in the line for water, I realized for the first time that there were people from the Philippines, India, Peru and Canada, all living in the same complex.
  
  
  At every condo and apartment complex, people were meeting for the first time, digging out bodies, helping one another. What would the next chapter in their stories be?

  
  
  

• I really regret buying that washing machine. That guzzler consumes 80 liters a cycle. That's four trips with a 20-liter plastic container.
  
  
• A 75-year-old physician died of a heart attack while climbing the staircase to his 11th floor condominium. He was carrying water.
  [Article in the Kobe Shimbun]
  
  
• The entire city has turned into an ashram. Most people think an ashram is some sort of Indian yoga school. Actually, it's a place where people learn what it is to be human, where they perform difficult but essential tasks like fetching water. Even rich people with servants spend time each year in an ashram so as to never forget what it is to be human.
  [A musician who returned to Kobe from India]
  
  
• I made friends for the first time with the Self-Defense Forces. Their sign said "SDF Shower Platoon."
  
  
• When those dusty green tanks came in to the schoolyard I was convinced it was a coup. "They've done it at last!" I thought. But then they put up tents for people to take baths. One time I was in a tub, and a young woman called out, "How is it? Not too hot, I hope." They should do this bath service all over the world.
  
  
• The yakuza [Japanese gangsters] were the first to come in and set up bath services. They were followed by the religious cultists. You know, that guy who claims to be the Buddha himself. They put up banners and flags and baths. It was a tough choice. I stood there for quite a while unable to choose, wondering which bath would lead to salvation.
  
  
  The quick response and efficient delivery of much-needed goods by the Yamaguchi Gumi yakuza group received coverage in the international press. But that only lasted a short while, and then they were gone. The Vietnamese in tents in Koma Park in Nagata Ward were frightened by rumors of a coup d'etat led by the Self-Defense Forces. In March, a huge banner was set up across a major pedestrian walkway. It read, "We thank you, SDF." But it was gone within a few days, and it still remains a mystery as to who put it up and who took it down.

  
  
  

• The water-supply trucks were from Fukuoka. Then one day they stopped coming and were replaced by trucks from Suginami Ward in Tokyo. It made us all wonder where all that water was coming from.
  
  
• I only began to seriously think about the water I drink once it stopped coming out of the tap.
  
  
• Caution: Do not use the drains in your home. The municipal sewage system is still cut off.
  [Notice at a Port Island apartment complex]
  
  
• Before your bowel movements, spread a newspaper over the toilet. Wrap the feces and take them to the waste disposal site afterwards.
  [Sign in civic hall bathroom]
  
  
• Corrugated cardboard boxes, if you know how, make good toilets. Did you know that?
  
  
• We tried the EM liquid. It took care of the odor nicely. I was impressed.
  
  
• Please sprinkle EM solution after use.
  [Sign in Higashi-Nada Ward temporary toilet]
  
  
  "EM" stands for "Effective Microbes," and was popular for some time among livestock farmers. It was used as a toilet deodorant in the most heavily damaged areas of Kobe. It creates an odor resembling ripe fruit.

  
  
  

• Whenever I'm in Osaka and I see high-school girls merrily flushing the toilet without a care in the world, I want to go up to them and shout, "Don't you know what you're doing?!" They should try carrying all that water they're flushing sometime.
  [A housewife in Chuo Ward]
  
  
• The problem goes back to our having only a single water supply system that mixes water from different sources. The Rokko area has enough water to supply the entire city. That could account for the drinking water system. Then the water from Lake Biwa and the Yodo River catchment could form a second system for household usage, in other words, for washing and toilets. This way, too, we wouldn't have to use too much chlorine. The Rokko water is fairly clean, so that would require minimal disinfecting. The Yodo water wouldn't be used for drinking, so again we wouldn't need much chlorination. And, too, with two systems, we'd always have one to rely on if the other broke down for some reason. We have an excellent opportunity to restructure our entire water supply system, but no one is paying any attention. What's more, people are buying bottled water for both drinking and cooking because the quality of the tap water is low. That's not right.
  [A local assembly member]
  
  
• Once the water supply returned, people stopped talking to each other. It's like we all returned to our plastic capsules.
  [A housewife in Nishinomiya]
  
  
• Maybe they should turn off the water supply for a week every year beginning on January 17. Turning off the traffic lights might be an idea too, but I suppose that'd be too dangerous.
  [A taxi driver in Nada Ward]
  
  
  Discussion about a one-minute "lights out" on the anniversary of the quake is going on. A one-week "Water Out" would probably be more effective to make people remember and to "Replay the Big One."

  
  

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[Tsumura Interview on the Quake's Aftermath Part 2]
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The theme of sensorium and texts that relate to sensing Japan are in the library of the linked senses. If you are interested in these texts (some are rather long), please click the text icon or the name of the text.

["earth" A Sensibility for Living in a World in Constant Flux by Shin'ichi Takemura]
["earth" From Kobe to the World by Takashi Tsumura]