the most beautiful place in all Japan... swept away

Source: http://www.pref.miyagi.jp/kankou/EN/sightseeing/Matsushima/Matsushima.htm

No matter how often it has been said, Matsushima is the most beautiful place in all Japan, and can easily hold its own against T’ung-t’ing or the Western Lake in China. The sea surges in from the southeast into a bay seven miles across, its waters brimming full like the Zhejiang River in China. There are more islands than anyone could count. Some rise up steeply, as through thrusting towards the skies; some are flat, and seem to crawl on their stomachs into the waves. Some seem piled double, or even three layers high. To the left, they appear separate; to the right, joined together. Some look as if they carried others on their backs, and some as if they held them in their arms, like a parent caring for a little child or grandchild. The pines are of the deepest green, and their branches, constantly buffeted by the winds from the sea, seem to have acquired a twisted shape quite naturally. The scene suggests the serene charm of a lovely woman’s face. Matsushima truly might have been created by Ōyamazumi [God of the Mountains] in the Great Age of the Gods. What painter or what writer could ever capture fully the wonder of this masterpiece of nature?

--Matsuo Basho, Oku no Hosomichi / The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

*       *       *

I visited it ten years ago, on a journey around the Tohoku region during which I tried to retrace some of Basho's steps as immortalised in his Oku no Hosomichi. I wasn't disappointed, and will forever cherish that emotional moment when I witnessed for the first time the landscape I had till then only read about in books.

Over these past two weeks I'd searched for news about its situation after the tsunami on March 11th, in the vague hope that it had escaped unscathed. It hasn't, heartbreakingly, as the tsunami washed over the islets in the celebrated bay.

Words fail me to convey how deeply saddened I am. Basho's famous haiku has acquired a new, dark resonance:

Ah, Matsushima!
Ah-ah Matsushima! Ah!
Matsushima! Ah!

And so I've added one more heartbreak to my list, which over these past few months has become unbearably long.

Ah, Japan...