Hello! It has been for a while since I wrote a blog last time. Life is so hectic... Here are some updates. I have published several books in Japanese. Please see "My books" section. My book "Can we love trauma?" was translated into Korean and published this year. Thank you for the translation! I uploaded new essays in the page "ESSAYS." They are English translation of a part from my book "Mother is Born," which is originally in Japanese. Please enjoy! It is becoming hot in Japan. Let's enjoy...
I recently gave a special lecture "Trauma, secrets and the pandemic: the role of transcultural psychiatry” at the Indonesian Psychiatric Association (PIT PDSKJI 2021) http://pitpdskji.org/. The invitation came from Dr. Cokorda Bagus Jaya Lesmana (Yaya), the chair of Indonesian Cultural Psychiatric section. When I first met Yaya more than twenty years ago, he was still a child. His mother, Dr. Suryani, was a psychiatric professor at Udayana University, and we did a collaborative research...
I've recently read Wave written by Sonali Deraniyagala. It is a memoir of a woman who was left alone after losing her two little sons, husband, and parents in Tsunami caused by Sumatra Earthquake. She is a researcher from Sri Lanka. It was somewhat distressing to read. However, at the same time, it was such an excellent piece of work that describes a tragic experience of loss with amazing exquisiteness and unrivaled accuracy. Confusion Belief that she is not allowed to have any hope Regret and...
I have uploaded my second essay in the page "ESSAYS." It is an English translation of a part from my book "Mother is Born," which is originally in Japanese. I am planning to share some other parts of this book in the following posts over the next few months. I'd also like to share happy news. The book "Mother is Born" was translated into Vietnamese and published in Vietnam last year, and another book of mine "Toroidal Island: Geopolitics of Trauma" has just been published in Chinese in Taiwan....
I finally renewed my website! In the page "ALBUM," you'll see some of my favorite photos which I took when I visited my friends around the world. In the page "ESSAYS," you can also find essays from my books, which were originally written in Japanese and translated by my daughter. I'll try to upload one of my essays at least every two months. I'd also like to share one of my articles, "The Power of Compassion: Truth Telling Among American Doctors in the Care of Dying Patients," which I came...
I have not been updating this blog for 4 years. So sorry, if you were waiting! It has been exhausting after the 2011 earthquake, and I've been busy. My book "Trauma" published in 2013 was very well received. There were nice book reviews in newspapers, and is starting to be considered a textbook on the subject. It was also translated into Korean and published! My new book "Mother is Born" was also published in 2016. This book will be translated in to Vietnamese and published soon. So exciting!...
Hello, after a long silence! Second anniversary for the great earthquake is coming soon. I wanted you to know what was happening in Japan, so I wrote frequently in English on this website. I guess it was a kind of hyperarousal reaction. Then I got very exhausted. However, I published two books in Japanese since then. One is "Disaster trauma and restoration stress" (Iwanami Publisher 2011). I wrote it in order to let people know that not only the acute period but also the recovery process can be...
<May 1- May 15> May is a very nice season: not cold, not hot, not humid. But there have been warnings of pretty big aftershocks. Some predictions are scientific (therefore general and vague), some are more psychic (more specific, but you never know how reliable they are) and some are based on animals' unusual behaviors (again, you never know how reliable). We are in Golden Week. It is a week long vacation with several holidays and weekends combined. Many people went to the disaster...
<April 25-30> One of my students who took my course on "Trauma and Global Society" several years ago sent me an announcement of a symposium in May first. I did not know she is from Minami-sanriku-cho in Miyagi, one of the towns hit very hard by the Tsunami - 70% of the houses were destroyed. Luckily her house is on the hill and her immediate family is ok, but some of her friends and relatives are still missing. She remembered a small anecdote I mentioned in my course. A Tohoku specialist...
<April 21-24> I happened to watch a TV program on trekking foot paths in the Lake District of England, remembering my walk with Gina, after Mike Lew's "Healing the Healers Workshop" in Yorkshire in 2003. I met a nice British woman, Gina, at the workshop and we became soul friends. I was planning to visit Gina with my children two years ago, but our schedules did not match and it was postponed. Now I would love to walk in nature without worrying about aftershocks or radiation. Then, what a...