ファイナンシャルタイムズの週末号に、Mrs.Moneypennyの人気コラムがあります。
日本に住んだことのある彼女が（このコラム、始まりは１９９９年、Email from Tokyoというタイトルだったそう）、
今回の地震後、日本に心を寄せたコラムを二つ書いてくれました。ひとつは以下に、
My happy memories of sad, sad Japan、もう一つ
Japan stays in our thoughtsはその下方に貼付けました。
My happy memories of sad, sad Japan
By Mrs Moneypenny
Published: March 18 2011 22:09 | Last updated: March 18 2011 22:09
Right now Japan is experiencing devastation the like of which the UK has not had to deal with since Hitler tried to bomb his way into our country. Why should I, living 6,000 miles away, care as much as I do? Natural disasters happen regularly, in Brisbane, in Bangladesh, even in Britain. We see devastation on our television sets and computer screens all the time.
But Japan is different. Not just because it really is very different – culture, architecture, topography, you name it. In fact, I tell people who have yet to visit that arriving there will be the closest experience they ever have to landing on Mars. But to me it is different because it is the country I have enjoyed visiting, and living in, more than any other.
I first went, on business, in 1988, and 10 years of further visits culminated in my moving there in 1998. It was in Japan that I started writing this column, which was then entitled “E-mail from Tokyo”. So it is the land that inspired most of Mrs Moneypenny’s first 32,000 words. It was there that I learned (among other things) which way to tie my yukata, why not to leave my chopsticks standing up in my rice in between mouthfuls, how far to bow for what level of apology, and what a Narita divorce is.
I tried lots of new things in Japan, including a love hotel, where couples can rent rooms by the hour. I vividly remember two things about that hotel – Mr M finding the golf channel on the TV within five minutes of checking in, and also the sign under the hairdryer. The notice, in English and Japanese, instructed guests that it should be used only for drying hair.
We lived right by Aoyama cemetery in Tokyo, and I loved teaching CC#2 to ride a bicycle without stabilisers in the street outside our home, and giving him swimming lessons in the American Club pool. CC#3 had his first birthday party in our home in the city, with its dedicated cupboard for supplies in case of an earthquake. How many of these cupboards were smashed to pieces last week?
I never went on the tourist trail to Kyoto – instead, when I had any spare time, I drove to the furthest reaches of the country, to its truly rural areas and to its small fishing ports. I travelled in a secondhand car bought in Japan – one that I am still driving today.
I visited Hokkaido in the north, and then headed right down to Dejima, on the south-western tip of Kyushu, the port where the Dutch were allowed to trade even when Japan was a closed economy. On another occasion, I even made it to the very end of the Noto peninsula. Here you are very conscious that you really are a long way from anywhere – the closest large city is probably Vladivostok. Perhaps most telling of all, even the pachinko gambling parlours had disappeared.
So I have seen at first hand exactly the kinds of communities that the earthquake has destroyed. This catastrophe has hit a really special, really different country. I made friends there, both Japanese and of many other nationalities, that I will have for the rest of my life. I eat – and cook – Japanese food whenever I can. If I could turn the clock back to any part of my life in the past 50 years it would be to my time in Japan.
Which is why this particular natural disaster feels personal. As I write, Japan’s prime minister is comparing the scale of devastation and disruption to that faced by the country after the end of the second world war.
The resilience of the Japanese people then, their pride in the country, their phenomenal work ethic and community spirit, enabled them to rebuild. Today it is the third-largest economy in the world.
It will survive; it will overcome what has happened to it. But even so, at a distance of 6,000 miles, I am not only there in spirit, I am very, very sad.
Japan stays in our thoughts
By Mrs Moneypenny
Published: April 15 2011 22:16 | Last updated: April 15 2011 22:16
What can we do to help from here? When I wrote on March 18 about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, I had the biggest postbag I have had for quite some time, many from people who, while not Japanese themselves, had previously lived there or still did. One lady wrote to tell me that her Cost Centres were all born there and that they think of the journey on the Narita Express from the airport as “a beautiful ride home”. She went on to say: “I remember sitting on the rocks by the sea in a little bay in Ofunato, now completely ravaged. Japan’s indescribable difference flows in our veins and, like you, I am sad, very sad, about what happened in the Tohoku region. It is some comfort to know that the Japanese have a rock-like resilience. But what can we do to help from here?”
Japan is still reeling from the shock of the earthquake that hit last month. At the time of writing, more than 13,000 people are confirmed dead, and the prime minister, Naoto Kan, is convening a national rebuilding council. One of my correspondents said that perhaps the shock is seeing people in the developed world having their homes, families and livelihoods destroyed, when we are more used to seeing these disasters in less developed countries. The fear is that the world’s third largest economy will slide into recession.
For me, March in Japan was one of the loveliest months of the year, with the arrival of the cherry blossom at the end of the month and the Hina-matsuri festival at the start, with White Day in between and my birthday on the 27th (I was 49 three weeks ago).
For those of you who don’t live in Japan, White Day is on March 14 and is when Japanese men (who do not give gifts on Valentine’s Day) are supposed to give a present to the lady in their life. Hina-matsuri is on March 3, when families display ornate dolls. You have to make sure you put them away immediately afterwards, as tradition suggests that people tardy with getting their dolls back in the cupboard will find it hard to marry off their daughters.
I remember, back when I lived in Tokyo, stopping to look at the doll display in the hotel next to the office. It had an English commentary, which told me that the Hina-matsuri festival was “a celebration of the traditional virtues of Japanese femininity”.
I have always wondered what those virtues actually were. The pinnacle of achievement for a Japanese wife, supposedly, is to be a Yamato nadeshiko. I once asked a married female Japanese colleague what this meant. Apparently it is “a woman who can understand a Japanese man who has a Yamato damashii (Japanese spirit). A woman who is quiet, patient, supportive, a woman who always behaves in an elegant way (never in a panic) and gracefully, and who never, ever complains about men’s attitudes. In other words, Moneypenny-san, not you.”
I was so moved by all your e-mails about Japan. One lady, still living there, said that she had to go on a business trip a week after the events of March 11. She said that at Haneda airport she felt very emotional and it was at that point that she read my column. “It was the first time I had cried in the week since the earthquake struck. You captured so much of the magic of living in Tokyo and how much the city can come to mean to you.”
This has spurred me on. What can we do from here? For a start, the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra will be touring Europe in May and all proceeds from their London concert (at the Royal Festival Hall) are going to the Japanese Red Cross Society and the Japan Society Tohoku Earthquake Relief Fund. So do buy tickets. And I am going to republish the first eight months of this column, “E-mail from Tokyo”, in a special limited edition and give all the books to the Japan Society to sell in aid of the relief fund. Do e-mail me if you would like a copy. Japan, we are still thinking of you.
