Water's betrayal

After a full day of travel with leaking babies and cranky neighbors, then more than an hour by van across a nighttime Tokyo in the company of a boss who thought we were capable of absorbing his advice, we arrived at the hotel that would be home for a few weeks. It was the middle of the night - and heaven knows what time in our bodies and minds - so we decided sleep was in order, which meant a bath for the kids and the adults.

The tub was plain and white, at first glance the kind you'd find in any bathroom anywhere on Earth. But it was on a different scale - bigger and deeper than any I'd ever seen in America. I turned on the tap and out rushed water in a cascade, filling that giant bathtub in a few minutes.

It also provided my first clue about how central water is in Japan, not just to its everyday life and cuisine but even to its national identity.

All of which makes this horrible betrayal, first by the sea and now by the tap, so excruciating to watch, even from this distance. The treachery is worse because the land won't cease its own trembling.

When we were there, we lived deep inland, miles from the ocean.

But everywhere you turned, there was water.

It was reflected in the food, from the sushi you'd expect, to hijiki - a pungent seaweed we had to convince cooks we would eat. It was in the stores, where you could buy heavy tackle necessary for a deep sea fishing trip or the featherweight stuff to outfit a trout trip. It was the medium for socializing and pampering at onsens, or bath houses. Every July, Japan celebrates a holiday devoted to the ocean.

You have to wonder what that day will be like in 2011.

Food grown in Fukushima Prefecture is now contaminated with radiation and has been removed from the market. This in a nation where the purity of food is the subject of almost constant monitoring and conversation.

It isn't unusual to hear government warnings about a specific type of fresh vegetable contaminated by this chemical or that, sometimes dioxin from the incinerators that are everywhere. Grocers will often, in fact, advertise that their produce is from somewhere else, somewhere less polluted.

It's impossible to do that at the moment. Everywhere is tainted. Everything is suspect now that the air and water are contaminated.

This week, fallout reached Tokyo's water supply. Officials counseled parents not to use it to prepare a baby's formula or food or to allow infants to drink from the tap.

And if the water is unsafe to drink, you have to wonder at the danger presented by everything else people do with it - washing themselves, their clothes, their dishes.

Japan has a uniquely intimate and terrible experience with the effects of radiation.

Nevertheless, the reaction in Tokyo - as far as I can tell - is the kind of stoic forbearance that has awed the rest of the world these past two weeks.

I couldn't help but think about how different the reaction would be here if radiation contaminated the water supply in Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Norfolk, say, from a uranium mine upstream.

One cold spring Saturday morning a dozen years ago outside Tokyo, I passed by a river not much wider than a large creek, the kind you see everywhere in every country. There were Japanese along its banks, each carrying a white plastic bag.

"They're picking up trash," a colleague said. "Somebody's there every week. They love that river."

To me, that says it all.

You can't be truly betrayed by something unless, on some level, you love it. I wonder where those people will be tomorrow.

Donald Luzzatto is The Virginian-Pilot's editorial page editor. Email: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.