{from “To Heal the Heart,” drama series shown on N.H.K. Japanese Television}
Japanese monks can adore riddles! They especially like to pose puzzles with no easy answers. One riddle by a Japanese Buddhist monk asks, “Why does the Goddess of Mercy and Compassion have 11 brains and 1000 arms?” One answer is that when the Goddess of Mercy felt overwhelmed by the number and nature of the desperate calls from people besieging her for help the Buddha allowed her to grow those arms! Some of those problems were so complex that the usual type of aid didn't work for many people. There were also so many calls she couldn't reach out to everyone. She felt overwhelmed. The Buddha, Amitabha, decided to aid her by allowing her to grow 1000 arms so she might not only reach out to people asking for aid but offer different and appropriate forms of help. She also grew 11 brains so she could use different subtle and sophisticated forms of intelligence and skills.
This was more or less the answer a Zen Monk told a Japanese nurse traumatized by being unable to save the lives of dying patients from Covid 19 when it hit Japan. He told the nurse "You can try to help a person one hundred times and fail 99 times or more and only succeed on the 101st attempt." The Monk didn't offer any panaceas or instant solutions. This was the riddle which sprung to mind while I watched a television drama serial “To Heal the Heart.” Like the nurse shattered by the pandemic, the main protagonist, a Korean Psychiatrist is overwhelmed by a terrible disaster. For on January 17th 1995 a massive earthquake struck the city of Kobe in Japan.
The results were devastating. In just eleven seconds 5,501 people were killed, 106,000 houses destroyed and at least 319,000 people left homeless. The city of Kobe was unprepared for such a catastrophe. Effective psychological intervention was required to prevent suicide and alcohol dependency. Doctor An knows that many people who abuse alcohol have a history of trauma and turn to drink to block out terrible pain.
The serial tells of the life of legendary Korean psychiatrist An Kansumasa who attempts to help the victims traumatized by the earthquake through developing more effective forms of intervention based on love of the patients. Although An is himself traumatized by events, he soldiers on and writes a book “To Heal the Heart” as an appeal for people to better treat the wounds inflicted by intense suffering. An shows enormous empathy for people as well as great love. An becomes a ground breaking specialist in Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The serial touches upon An's tense and troubled relationship with his father, how he meets his devoted wife and his attempt to aid a homeless Japanese woman who is a chronic alcoholic whose previous calls for help have been rejected.
I liked this serial not just because of the superb acting but the deep dialogue, moving music, and the warm compassion which is abundant. This is one of those rare thoughtful serials you encounter. It is not pretentious but sincere. It has soul!
The serial has many poignant and moving scenes. The main drama centers on how An has to deal with all kinds of grief and the terrible loneliness of survivors which is not often understood. One scene focuses on a quote from An's book which states, “Wounded people often feel shunned.” An breaks down in tears when he notices his father, who died from cancer, has underlined this line in his book. An sees this when he opens the box of his dead father. He now grasps the full tragedy of his father who felt immense loneliness while he was dying from cancer.
At the start of the serial An's father advises his son to study medicine because he will face less discrimination from the Japanese as a Korean. His father works very hard to keep his business going but finally takes a loss and worse, is afflicted by cancer. On his deathbed his father confesses to An how he feels ashamed of being a failure.
An answers to him that "To work hard and fail is nothing to be ashamed of." He also tells his father that "When you told me I had to become an individual it hurt. I felt I had been abandoned." Scenes such as those encourage viewers to question the conventional views of success and failure which humiliate people. We are all dependent on each other and there is no such thing as a total winner or total loser. One person's loss is also mine!
When An visits people at a shelter for earthquake victims he witnesses two children playing a game called earthquake where they are shaking a table and making believe houses fall down. Their father shouts at them "Stop it. How can you play such a game when so many people have died terribly?" But An tactfully tells the father that this game is a way which the children play to better cope with the trauma of events. To the relief of a grateful father, An organizes a game of handball with the children, and this cheers everyone up. An also joins in the game. In this regard it is interesting to note that younger children cope better with the problem of post traumatic stress syndrome by the use of play and storytelling.
While children tend to reenact events in a way with toys which allows for a positive resolution, adults try to block out all the events by avoiding talking about the earthquake and avoiding places which remind them of terrible events. Children tend to be more resilient. In one scene we see a young couple moving to a field beyond the city saying to each other “The Earthquake can't reach us here." We can never underestimate the long term impact of post traumatic stress syndrome.
The vast majority of survivors of the Holocaust state they still suffer nightmares decades after events and only 25% of victims claim to have recovered. An, understanding that the city of Kobe needs a better understanding of those problems and improved intervention, campaigns for a much more caring and improved medical system. At the core of this system medical professionals must be listening to patients, being present and giving them your love. When one journalist asks An whether the city of Kobe has recovered from the earthquake after 5 years he answers, "No, suffering people still live under its shadow." So there is still “the disaster after the disaster.” A patient tells An "I always feel the World is shaking.”
How An responds to the suffering of a young woman who has not only chronic alcoholism but seems to have more than one personality is moving. Many victims of this illness, Dissociative Identity Disorder, have suffered trauma early on in their lives by suffering physical or sexual abuse. To contain this pain, they often can invent another person--or personalities within themselves--who take the brunt of the pain. The aim is to keep the pain at a distance. This condition is rarely understood and can be misdiagnosed as schizophrenia. A counselor in the know should be able to see this.
In one encounter An asks the patient whether the patient has hobbies, but instead of answering she asks in return if he himself has hobbies. An answers "I like to play jazz. Unlike classical music, jazz does not have notations and you can play it in different ways. If you make a mistake, it can be seen as original. Jazz allows me to fully become myself." An even plays in a jazz band.
This fact reminded me of how a Russian student told me how listening to Jazz allowed her to enter a world with a better sense of freedom because jazz does not have binding rules. In R.D. Laing's work “The Divided Self,” Laing mentions how a schizophrenic patient adored Jazz. “There was only one situation as far as I could judge in which he could let himself 'go' without anxiety at not recovering himself again and that was by listening to jazz '{page 50, “The Divided Self,” R. D. Laing, 1965, London: Penguin Books}.
When An confronts some victims of the earthquake, he hears a woman ask, "Who are you? You are not a psychiatrist are you? I don't want to be seen talking to a psychiatrist.” Even talking innocuously to a psychiatrist can lead to being negatively stigmatized. An's position is that we should not be ashamed of revealing weakness as it can actually be an advantage in developing empathy for others. An goes on to say that “We should not abandon lonely people.”
An tells a colleague "You should not apologize for being slow. Being slow is a good thing. If you hurry too much you miss things." Doctor An certainly does not like to be rushed in dealing with his patients. While he is training to be a doctor his boss tells him to quickly diagnose a patient he retorts, "Diagnosing is not like producing goods in a factory. It requires time."
This serial can be painful to watch. It can be very harrowing at times as we watch his father, and then An himself, die from cancer at the age of just 39. But this serial addresses in a poignant way the nature of mental health problems and how we come to terms with death and how we might grieve. Some of the wise words of the serial make it a must to watch. The serial drama claims to be based on real events. It is based on the book written by Doctor An called “To Heal the Heart.”
Note: It would be wonderful if this serial could encourage more people to read the book in Japanese. And getting a copy of an English translation would be great! {To my knowledge one is not available, or at least I can't find a translation}. Of course, jazz fans will love this serial!
The serial makes the point of how we should look out for lonely people. “We should not abandon lonely people,” declares An. In his final farewell to his wife, An writes, "I 'm grateful to you....I knew when I got home I got a smile and that is how I could bear suffering.”