A review by alysonimagines
Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey by Marie Mutsuki Mockett

5.0

As a biracial American with Japanese heritage, I really appreciate the rare in-depth insight into Japanese culture that Marie Mutsuki Mockett's memoir offers, since I have grown up mostly in the United States and am painfully aware of my own knowledge gap. It's an account not only of Mockett's geographic journey across Japan after the Fukushima nuclear disaster but also of a spiritual journey in which she explores the many rituals of death and grieving to be found in various Buddhist sects, Shintoism, and other Japanese cultural traditions as a way of coming to terms with her own grief over her American father's death. Says Mockett, "If you are a Westerner and you spend enough time in Japan—and you speak Japanese—you will eventually be told that you cannot truly understand the Japanese. Only the Japanese can understand themselves." Yet having a Japanese mother who took her to Japan many times as a child to visit the family's Buddhist temple, and having sufficient fluency in the language to converse with the Japanese on many aspects of their culture and history, Mockett is more qualified than the average Westerner to observe what makes the Japanese a truly unique people. Her observations are beautifully articulate and enable me to appreciate Japan in greater depth than I could have reached from my own limited experience.