Coffee with Sensei

August 9th, 1945. Precisely this same time I transcribe these

lines, at 11:02 AM, exploded the Fat Man bomb on the port city

of Nagasaki.

A few days later, Japan surrendered to the Allied forces, and thus ended one of the most extended pages of suffering in the history of the Japanese people.

Since then, discussions about the guilt of Japanese war generals, discussions about rearmament, whether or not to remember the victims of war, and whether or not to sing the National Anthem in schools, come up from time to time.

But the truth is that after 73 years, only those who had their house cruelly bombed know the real dimension of the pain and tragedy of war.

The samurai already said that we must prepare ourselves to avoid war...

Let`s do a minute of silence.

- Mokuto...

*Mokuto = silent reflection in memory of the victims of a catastrophe



"The destruction of multiple lives

I write this text now at night. It has been a few hours since the terror that occurred in 1945 in Japan in Hiroshima. It`s been hard to write, my hands are trembling in the face of so much horror that I remember from the Atomic Bomb Museum in Hiroshima. I remember the dress, the bicycle, the police, and even the girl who was born after the incident and died a few years after due to leukemia caused by the radiation. All of them, animals, plants, and all signs of life that disappeared, deserve to be remembered, I will now remind as a meditation on behalf of all this.

There was a woman who was living her day by taking care of her house, probably thinking: When will this war end? Where is my beloved husband? In Manchuria, in China, nobody knows…

Suddenly there was a light ripping up the sky. The sun was covered by the light. And that light burned all over the girl`s skin. How could that be possible? Did God punish me for thinking of my husband? And then a hot, strong wind spreads destroying huge windows and walls as if it were the Hell´s gate breaking wide open, shards of glass fell and stick on her like whips or rains of fire. Or is it a demon thing that came out to ruin us?

Today, the only thing left of her was her dress she was wearing on that tragic day. There were blood spots on the side and back.

She died a few days after the bomb dropped.

“Was it God or the Devil who took me? Was it the light of the divine, or the devilish wind that knocked me over?”

Not far away, there was a boy who won a gift from his father. It was a bicycle, it was a gift to show a father`s love for his three-years little boy. The father was inside the house, the boy was appreciating the toy, lovely given by his father. Even with the war, there is still a father-son relationship, how sweet... Maybe that`s what the father thought.

An airplane flies over, and a few seconds later an intense light happens. What´s that?!

Soon after, the hot and devastating wind throws the boy and kills him.

The father survived but the boy died, and the only thing left that day was the bicycle, the father took the bike and kept it as every parent keeps the toys of their babies before taking them to bed, but this time there was no more love between them, there was only a love that was brutally separated by a light and a wind, just as an autumn leaf is torn from the tree and taken away.

In service, alert, under pressure and of course, living a war in a city where he knew very well, a watchful policeman ready for anything. He heard speeches about the power of his nation ruled by an emperor who was a God himself, who commanded them with all divine wisdom and that therefore there would be no chance to rest because they were serving a God.

As if it were a surprise mission the bomb dropped.

A light!

A wind….

Destruction…

Was his emperor a God who did this to him?

And his wife, what could happen to her?

Later, he would know that she died.

Without understanding perfectly, he saw people looking for relatives and neighbors, gathered some of them to help him in counting the dead bodies, the missing and alive people. Is this the right thing to do? After so much suffering without knowing the destiny of his wife and all wounded himself, he looked around and saw that many people went through the same or worse, then decided to help them.

In his task, he had to write down the names of the disappeared and the dead, write down the names of his friends he would never see, and note the names of the neighbors who died.

After all that confusion, sprouts of hope are born, a girl was born after the tragedy, bringing hope for a prosperous future.

All her childhood was wonderful, she was beautiful, dear, a good family, she was a flower!

And then, leukemia made her sick, the cause of leukemia: radiation. All that joy that the little girl brought became the memory of the dark past of a few years ago. Death was certain. And it happened when she was only nine years old.

What is more terrible?

An immediate thing that suddenly takes everything away?

Or a hope that has turned into tragedy causing slow suffering?

It`s night now, seventy-three years ago that this happened, I imagine myself in one night from that date.
The stars are dark, the trees are haunted, where there were objects that disappeared, and only their shadow remained.

I see each character, a wounded woman, a father burying his son, a persistent agent almost dead thinking of the other ones and a child who tried to bring hope but could not survive.

What I hope, is that everyone recognizes that what occurred seventy-three years ago can still happen today.

There is no greater suffering."

Yoshimitsu




Yoshimitsu - Training in Dojo in Japan