“The promise of the cherry trees” by Keiko Ichiguchi

Four years have passed since the earthquake that has shaken the north-eastern Japan on the 11th of March 2011. The Italian newspapers and television have broadcast as a memorial, along with terrifying images of the devastation brought by the tsunami, the seemingly emotionless visages of Japanese people.

Yet, behind their apparent composure, how did the Japanese truly live through the catastrophe that hit their Country?

Keiko Ichiguchi, who hails from Osaka but resides in Bologna, offers her own personal experience in the manga La promessa dei ciliegi, published by Euromanga Edizioni.

Itsuko, a young Japanese author living in Italy with her husband Angelo, has always coped with the impending weight of death. Due to her delicate constitution, caused by cardiac problems, since her childhood she has always been forced to avoid excessive physical efforts, isolating her from her peers and their activities, including gym class. Those endless hours of boredom seem gone for good when the new gym teacher, Yuriko Tada, finally teaches the girl how to believe in herself and her strength in spite of her frailty. A strong bond is formed between teacher and pupil, and endures even once Itsuko leaves for Italy: years later, no longer a child, she still visits her aging gym teacher each time she returns to Japan. Once the shadow of illness falls on Yuriko, it is Itsuko who is nearest to her – she promises that the following year, 2011, they will meet in April to watch the cherry flowers bloom.

These flowers symbolically stand for the impermanence of life and the certainty of death. A certainty that seems all the heavier when, at 8.30 of March 11, news reaches Itsuko: a tsunami has struck Japan's coasts and one of Fukushima plant's reactors has collapsed. Thousands of victims are confirmed among the media's apocalypse frenzy.

Italian news feeds seem unreliable, Japanese ones seem to hold back. Itsuko is gripped by doubts, uncertainty, fear: why does the Japanese government continue to reassure the public, rather than state the facts? Why intervention seems to come too late? Trust in the Japanese government wanes, while the whole world seems intent on declaring Japan to be over.

But not for Itsuko. Against all odds, she flies to Japan, to witness reality with her own eyes and, most of all, to keep her promise: the last shred of certainty amid the debris carried by the undertow.

Just like the Buddhist parable of the monk watering a dead tree until it springs back to life, cherry flowers will bloom and, with their beauty and strength, will give Itsuko, Tada-sensei and the Japanese the courage they need to keep going and smile, in spite of the tragedy that befell them.

The cherry tree, as the symbol of a nation that intimately knows the ephemeral and its meaning since ancient times, seems to invoke a silent promise: to rise again, in spite of adversity, in the face of the thin thread that binds life and death – a thread as delicate as those very cherry flowers.

“We are so desperately ephemeral. Still, we can't help making a promise with ourselves, not knowing what will come tomorrow. Seasons come and go, and flowers bloom once more. They die, yet they are reborn over and over”.

 

 

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