Reverend Kaneta and the possessed of the tsunami

Taiō Kaneta, a Zen priest in Kurihara, Miyagi, said that after the 2011 tsunami he performed rites for people who felt possessed by the spirits of the drowned.

2012 CE · 38.73, 141.02 · status: account

The account

Journalist Richard Lloyd Parry documented his work in the London Review of Books (2014) and the book 'Ghosts of the Tsunami' (2017), including a builder who spoke in the voices of the dead. Kaneta also ran a mobile listening café for survivors.

The sceptical view

Kaneta himself framed the rites as care for grief and trauma; the cases are personal accounts.

Connections in the atlas

• Ghost passengers of Ishinomaki

Sources

1. London Review of Books: Richard Lloyd Parry, Ghosts of the Tsunami (2014)