Japan got a famous visitor last week, as the Dalai Lama travelled through the heavily damaged Tohoku region, bringing words of encouragement to those rebuilding their lives and consoling the many who had lost loved ones to the tsunami waves. The town of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture was one of the worst hit during the disaster, with 3800 people killed, and the Dalai Lama held a service at a Buddhist temple there. He also angered those Japanese who support abolishing all nuclear power plants, saying that he was in favor of “using nuclear energy for peaceful means as a way to bridge the socioeconomic gap in developing countries in the absence of more efficient alternative energy sources” — but this was not something the anti-nuclear protestors in Japan wanted to hear. Although 70-80% of Japanese will insist they have no religion, when all is said and done Japan is a very Buddhist nation, though it’s very different from other varieties of Buddhism, focusing on remembering one’s ancestors after they’ve died and being okay with Buddhist priests driving around town in $100,000 Mercedes-Benz sedans.
The Dalai Lama consoles a boy who lost his parents.
