Ishinomaki, Japan ~ A Story of Human Compassion 

UNEARTHLY SILENCE hangs over Japan.  Even though it’s Golden Week, a national holiday that is usually celebrated with a series of festival activities that last for a week, the Rising Sun is in solemn mourning.  Everything is tempered down.  Nobody wants to appear disrespectful to those that died during the earthquake and tsunami on March 11th, 2011.

This was Japan’s version of 9/11.   

Although the destruction was not carried out by a group of terrorist or warring nation, the magnitude of the horror is impossible to measured.  It’s one thing to see it on TV under breaking news, it’s entirely another to walk through the aftermath in person.  

The last time I had seen such destruction was when I visited Ground Zero just weeks after the towers collapsed.  I could smell it then, as I could smell it now, the stench of decaying debris and asbestos that leaves a nasty metallic taste in my mouth.

I’m not sure what I expected, but as I approached the Shotaro Ishinomori Museum, I had a funny feeling this bizarre spacecraft and the activity surrounding it would somehow play a significant role in my mission.  I just didn’t know how it was going to play out.  I was too busy filming and attempting to navigate a country that didn’t speak my language.   

It was all surreal.  

Stan Lee, the man who created Spider-Man, once said, “The lesson of Spider-Man, if there is one, if you are able to do something that will do good, that will help people, you damn well oughta do it.”

After March 11th, I couldn’t get Stan’s words out of my head, especially when I read about the school that loss more than 70% of their children and teachers when the tsunami struck just minutes after the 9.0 earthquake.  

How can anyone measure the loss of life?  If it weren’t for the Shotaro Ishinomori Museum, named after Shotaro Ishinomori, the original creator of the Kamen Rider, there would be very little for the people of Ishinomaki to cling onto.  Everything else has been destroyed.   Although Shotaro passed away in 1998, his legacy lives on with this museum.     

Outside the entrance were a number of volunteers from International Red Cross and Peace Boat, preparing meals in blackened kettles with a large Japanese flag hanging on the wall behind them.  I continued filming, passing several Kaito characters in costume, as I followed Jill Glikbarg, a renowned yoga instructor, inside the spacecraft to deliver a package of Kanji cards, 

Little did I know, until returning to Tokyo, that Shotaro Ishinomori was Japan’s version of Stan Lee.   Once this realization hit me, the significance and meaning behind my visit to Ishinomaki couldn't have been clearer.  I will have to return with the intention of launching my comic book version of Skyscraperman.    Shotaro Ishinomori and Stan Lee would expect nothing less!

Below is video that depicts our trip to Japan.  Hope you enjoy!  Namaste~