Hiromitsu Shinkawa

The ocean was now everything it had taken from him. Clinging to the splinters of his roof, grateful he had recently added a grainy waterproof tiling, the ocean supported him, carried him, roused him, or tranquilized him. Black waters brought him what means of survival he required, a plastic bottle to catch rain, a sheet of plastic he could dry off and use as a blanket.


The edge of his homeland drifted farther away with each hour, now a mere blur on the horizon. As it receded, he re-considered the decision not to swim to shore when he was a mere 100 meters away. But away from what?

The tsunami had hit with ferocity. First a shallow advance of water only ankle deep, then a raging torrent, a hammer of black water that smashed a commercial street into a cataract of bobbing cars and trucks. A rivulet that tore homes from their foundations with the hiss of still live electrical wires and gas pipes. In less than five minutes, his neighborhood, his grocery store, all things familiar were gone. In their place, a flotsam of gubbage- broken things, floating things, splintered things, a skin of chaos.

What had there been to swim toward? he asked himself again.

Standing on the edge of his rooftop, grief stricken, just scrambled and dripping from those chaotic waters, he saw only the ragged edge of his city, houses floating like boats. No shoreline. Even to clench his fist was hard, the cold made his fist a stone. The tendons ached.

Instead he laid himself down on his back, stretched out with his chest open to the sky, and let himself weep. There, splayed across his rooftop, he let the sun dry him, let the wind caress him, let the ocean weave its endless undulation beneath him. Holding his hand above him, like a silhouetted starfish against the bright sky, he saw the wedding band that remained on his finger, a solid band of gold. Unnoticed went the sky, which was clear save a single column of smoke that dispersed like a dream.

Later, when he would wake from brief naps, dreaming of the steaming bathhouses, his eyes would search for that column of smoke, knowing its path was the way home.

“But what home do I have now?” he asked himself, feeling the roof buckle.

When night hit, there were the lights in the sky. Stars, a half moon like a lidded eye. And helicopters, red beads blinking across the sky, always heading back to land.

He wondered what was happening there. Had the waters receded? Had they found her yet? Would they ever? A red light blinked faintly, but it did not turn his way.

The only certainty was that he was moving farther into the ocean as the waters pulled back to the epicenter, 9,000 feet underwater, from whence they had exploded.

Chapter Two

An infant God wrestled inside the womb, kicking against the elasticity that enmeshed her. And the world shook, the plates moved.

Hiromitsu and his wife dropped their bags of bean sprouts, packaged fish, miso paste. The shelves rattled as they scrambled for cover. After a minute, scrambling for a safe place, they held each other in the middle of the street, watching themselves and the power lines sway like arythmic dancers.

It was the longest he had been shaken.

The shaking would not stop, and they were falling down now, everytime they tried to get up.

Immediately,  city-wide sirens and a mechanically insistent voice, echoed.
"Tsunami warning. Move to higher ground. Evacuate immediately."

Glass shards were falling like rain. The earth still shook while he fumbled for the car door.

"We need things. We need clothes!" said his wife.

And so they drove home.

Their neighbors were leaving in a hurry.

"Evacuate!" they shouted. "Go!"

Instead, as the world stopped shuddering, they climbed their stairs, found bags, and began stuffing them with clothing, pictures, a computer.

"Tsunami warning. Move to higher ground. Evacuate immediately."

"What is that?" he said, suddenly aware of a river. The sound of a river as it sped by. But there was no river here. Then, broken glass.

He ran downstairs to see black water pouring in, rising up the stairs, pushing him back. He ran to his wife, screaming.

The house lurched, flipping on its side, the lights went out. Blackness except for the windows. Water covered their bed.  Their TV sank to the bottom of his bedroom.

There were only windows to leave through. He shoved her through, and she said, "The water is here!"

"Climb up!" he told her, still shoving her. Water forced itself in, cold, hard, dense.

He grabbed for the edges of the window frame with his eyes and mouth filled with the sea.

Then the world flipped,
a sky opened above,
the waters carried him.

He heard only the roar of the dark salt waters. Somewhere above him, a bleary sun twisted in the sky, blurred by a sheet of water.

When the water released him, he clung to the edge of his roof, riding a dark current that carried other homes, cars, sticks. He was cold, shivering. He coughed, but could not clear his lungs.

"Mitsuko!," he shouted.  "Mitsuko!"

Though he searched everywhere for her, she did not answer.

"Tsunami warning. Move to higher ground. Evacuate immediately."


The wave churned fields into mud, looted stores,  drank cattle. It circled a stubborn home, as if angered by its resistance.

After hours had passed, the river stopped moving, and gathering itself,  commenced it retreat, inexorably, back into the ocean form whence it came, gently carrying him and the ashes of the city out to sea.