By Claire Walla

Last Friday, when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit Japan, Lynn Matsuoka bolted out of bed. Though it was around 2 p.m. on the other side of the world, Matsuoka was here, in Bridgehampton, where she lay sound asleep
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“I woke up at exactly 2:40 a.m.,” she said, explaining that a malfunctioning alarm clock prompted her random awakening. After inadvertently turning on the radio, she found out about the quake, as well as the ensuing tsunami and was glued to the TV.

Although Matsuoka has made the East End her primary residence for the past three years, she previously spent 37 years in Tokyo, where as an artist she was fully immersed in the ancient cultures of kabuki theatre and sumo wrestling (she was even married to a top-division sumo star).

“My life was 100 percent in Japan,” she said.

Tsunami

Now, staring at dozens of images of waterlogged farmland, uprooted buildings and displaced people; and watching videos of powerful waves breaching borders, lifting cars and leaving behind sullied waters and fields of sludge; Matsuoka said “I wake up in the morning feeling like I’m in those mud puddles.”

Though Matsuoka’s immediate family lives here on the East End and her ex-husband’s extended family is mostly concentrated in the Osaka area — which was relatively unaffected by the disaster — Matsuoka still has a strong network of friends and coworkers in Tokyo, as well as Sendai, an area where she’s now focusing a lot of her attention.

“A large number of sumo wrestlers and kabuki actors come from the Sendai area,” she explained. “And Sendai has basically been washed off the map.”

Not only was the earthquake’s epicenter located in the ocean just 80 miles east of Sendai, a coastal town in the northern part of Honshu; but when the tsunami came spilling into homes and buildings, the city’s infrastructure was no match for the strength of the waves.

Matsuoka stays in touch with the sumo community by way of the “sumo mailing list,” a virtual message board on which those active in the sumo community communicate by computer. And while she hasn’t yet been in touch with any wrestlers or their families, earlier this week Matsuoka heard from a sumo stable owner in Sendai. (A stable is similar to a training camp, in which wrestlers work, eat and sleep.)

“The summer stable was washed away,” she said. The stable owner was apparently not there at the time of the tsunami, but returned to the area to find the building gone.”
Matsuoka doesn’t know how many people were living at the stable at the time, nor how many (if any) were actually inside during the tsunami. But she said there’s a good change a small number of retired wrestlers and perhaps some workers actually made the stable their home.

“They were probably washed away, too,” she said.

Now, Matsuoka is putting her energy and attention into raising funds for the sumo community. Though her fundraising plans are still in the works, her ultimate goal is to sell her own artwork — handmade prints, lithos and giclees, which will be sold at three different price points — through a private fund she hopes to set-up with an American lawyer she knows who heads the Tokyo branch of a major law firm.

“The money will go directly to the families of the sumo wrestlers, many of whom are from Sendai — [some of whom] are probably not there anymore,” she noted. However, should the fund bring in a lot of money, other donations may be made to other needy areas, as well.
Though the prints can sell for up to $1,200, Matsuoka only plans to ask as low as $100 for some, though there will be three different price points, depending on the value of the work. She noted that she has about 4,500 prints currently sitting in a storage facility in the city, but as soon as she can get a hold of them she will put them up for sale.

Earthquake
Matsuoka has been in touch with a few close friends in Tokyo, both those who live in the city center and some who live in her former neighborhood, Ryogoku, which is where Tokyo’s sumo stables are housed.

Though a friend living in a fairly modern high rise in the center of the city reported relatively little damage, Matsuoka’s friend Jonathan Wilder — who also lives in the city center — sent pictures of the wreckage caused to his apartment.

“Most foreigners we know live in newer places and did not suffer the same kind of damage,” he wrote in an email. “But plenty of ordinary Japanese living in similar apartments did.”

Matsuoka said that a friend of hers living in Ryogoku said the damage to her home “was like a mad dog got it in its teeth and flung it around,” Matsuoka recalled.
These older buildings, as well as the sumo stables, she continued, “are essentially made of paper maché.”

“They’re wooden legs with cement over it — in my estimation it’s crap,” she added. “The sumo stables are beautifully designed, but they’re not solid construction.”

Nuclear Threat
Of the people Matsuoka has been in touch with, everyone is reported to be fine. However, the state of the nation’s nuclear threat still seems unclear.

Wilder wrote on Wednesday, March 16 that “the situation at several plants appears to be out of control and can only get worse as rods remain exposed.” However, he added that he plans to stay in Tokyo. At least for now.

“As long as wind directions are out to sea, we are okay here in Tokyo,” he wrote.
According to another report from the city, Tokyo is experiencing rolling blackouts and continued aftershocks.

“Now in Tokyo we seem to be living on a one-day-at-a-time basis,” he continued. “We are still having earthquakes, a very strong one this morning, and the situation in Fukushima with the nuclear power plants is a growing concern as we are not being given straight facts from the power company and only slightly better from the government.”
Matsuoka agreed with this assessment of the Japanese government, saying “one thing about the Japanese is that they won’t admit anything negative until it’s so in their face they can’t deny it anymore.”

Which, she added, makes it difficult to determine the extent of the country’s current nuclear disaster.

“They are detail-oriented to a fault, and if there’s a solution, they’ll fix it,” she added. However, she noted that if the government has already ordered evacuations for tens of thousands of people, “that’s saying something.”

Matsuoka is in the process of setting up a website for those interested in buying her artwork. In the meantime, she will be posting updates on her website: www.traditions.jp.

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