Acceptance

Acceptance in Ghosts of the Tsunami is a prevalent theme in several different ways: at the forefront of the book is author Richard Parry’s argument that Japanese society’s encouragement of passive acceptance – of the status quo, of death, etc. – is a highly toxic cultural trait. He demonstrates how much pain the insistence on passive acceptance causes in personal lives, such as when parents lose a child but are afraid to grieve openly; in the political sphere, leading to a stagnating democracy; and in the community, where people withhold criticism of the community for fear of being ostracized from it. All of these realms in which acceptance hurts individuals indirectly and directly are discussed in Ghosts of the Tsunami.

Firstly, as Naomi Hiratsuka mentions, passive acceptance of death and grief is expected of individuals in traditional Japanese culture. Naomi’s father-in-law, a staunchly conservative and traditional Japanese...