絆2020：ニッケイの思いやりと連帯―新型コロナウイルスの世界的大流行を受けて

A fines del año de 1910, el número de inmigrantes japoneses en Estados Unidos había llegado a cerca de 80 mil, en México y Perú rebasaban en cada país los 10 mil trabajadores, en tanto que en Brasil ya laboraban más de 5 mil. En la medida en que el número de inmigrantes japoneses iba creciendo en el continente, los sectores racistas de la sociedad norteamericana fueron fomentando el odio y la persecución contra los inmigrantes. Para combatir la llegada de trabajadores japoneses, estos sectores no dejaron de difundir noticias falsas y ...

I’ve been struggling with what more to say about the pandemic now known as the worst disaster of our lifetimes. I don’t ever remember feeling this fearful and uncertain about the future, particularly knowing as infection and death statistics grow with steady predictability, this highly contagious virus will most certainly infect someone I love, many of whom are in the dangerous high-risk age group.

In the midst of this immediate fear, I realized that most of us baby boomers and younger don’t have the first-hand experience of that other terrifying time in American history when our families ...

In November 2019, I was in a US hospital for five days. My temperature was hovering around 102°F. I sweat profusely, followed by the chills. I couldn’t get out of bed without collapsing to the floor. I was dizzy, I had lost my appetite, I was extremely weak.

This was before COVID was a daily news story, though medical researchers now have speculated that the virus started around that time in Northern Italy (and not China).

I went to the Emergency Ward and the medical staff ran several tests on me. They found that my bladder, my kidneys ...

10 weeks ago, I joyfully drank sake and ate the best tonkatsu in Tokyo.

8 weeks ago, I toured snowy Hokkaido tasting their bounty of kombu, oysters, and uni.

6 weeks ago, I played Mahjong with my neighbors and won three rounds in a row.

4 weeks ago, I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at the local pizzeria. Later that evening, our Governor called for a statewide shutdown.

2 weeks ago, the stock market crashed.

How the world has changed. One moment we were celebrating the first day of 2020 with Oshogatsu ryori. Cheers to a new decade of hope ...

“What you are feeling is grief,” says the article from Harvard Business Review. And yes, living in COVID-19 in Washington State, March 2020 feels like a kind of grief, even though I have grieved before. But the waking up to a profoundly altered reality each day, each wave a fresh infusion of loss, or a looming reminder of losses to come—grief feels like an appropriate description.

Honestly, the way that I dealt with grief in the past was to avoid. I avoided through hyperactivity, through overachievement, anything to avoid feeling grief. Learning the skill of grieving has really taken ...