In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • The Account of the Director of T Hospital (from Bartlebies)
  • Yōji Sakate
    Translated by Samuel Malissa

The hospital where I work is on high ground, so it wasn’t damaged by the tsunami.

What do I see when I look out the window now?

A wide-open space.

Almost no buildings.

No people.

It’s like a scene from long ago, before there was any form of civilization here.

If I look carefully, I can make out collapsed structures and abandoned cars.

No one comes to clean them up.

The whole area has been off-limits for some time.

It’s a private hospital, twenty-two kilometers south of the nuclear power plant.

I was holed up in here for a while after the earthquake.

There were more than one hundred in-patients at the time.

More than a few were on life support, and if the power went out they would die.

We did everything we possibly could to keep our emergency generators running.

The patients had to be able stay where they were.

Many of those with serious conditions would be in danger of taking a turn for the worse if they were to be moved.

They might lose their will to keep fighting.

I call that their “vital feeling.”

Actually, I consider myself something of an expert at recognizing this vital feeling. [End Page 108]

One day, I encountered someone at the hospital from whom I could detect no vital feeling.

It wasn’t that this person’s vital feeling was weak.

It was that I couldn’t sense it at all.

It’s not like I was unsure whether or not it was there.

Rather, what I felt from this individual was something altogether different.

Even when there were multiple explosions at the nuclear reactor, we didn’t leave the hospital.

We couldn’t leave.

I’m not just being dramatic.

There were families who said to us, “We can’t take grandma with us, so we need you to keep looking after her.”

An evacuation zone was declared within a twenty-kilometer radius of the nuclear plant.

The hospital is two kilometers outside of that. We were told to shelter indoors.

The government wasn’t being honest about the situation.

I have no doubt that we were hit with heavy doses of radiation.

Radiation levels weren’t being measured at that point, so we can’t say for sure how badly we were affected.

But people further out than us were worried.

Some facilities wouldn’t accept people from our hospital unless they had proof of being screened for radiation.

Naturally people wanted to get away from a place like that.

Patients left, doctors left, nurses and staff workers left.

New people weren’t coming to work here, and medical students kept their distance.

I was desperate to keep people at the hospital.

That was when I met the person from whom I could detect no vital feeling.

He came to the hospital to help, not as a nurse, just as a willing body.

After just a few questions in our interview it became apparent that he had no medical training.

He seemed polite and refined, but somehow muted.

But I suppose I liked his quietness. His fastidiousness.

. . . And I needed the help.

We had passed through the initial difficulties after the disaster, but we hadn’t yet found the new rhythm of the daily routine at the hospital. [End Page 109]

The problem wasn’t providing adequate medical care, but rather handling all the other labor that goes into keeping a hospital running.

I thought I could assign him whatever tasks he was willing and able to complete.

Most of all I needed a clerk.

Someone to organize the mess of documents and information that had been piling up.

He was so diligent in filing and cataloging everything that it seemed he took a particular pleasure in that type of clerical work.

The other task I set him was handling my communications, all the messages that came in when I ran around the hospital or stepped out on an errand, all the papers that accumulated when I was away from my office.

I...

pdf

Share