After my older son Luke earned his degree at UC Santa Cruz, he went to Japan where he has been ever since. That was almost two decades ago. He created Knee High Media in 1996, and my younger son Joe went to work for Luke after Joe graduated from Haverford College in 2002.

Luke is married to Kaori, whose family lives in Yaizu, south of Tokyo. Joe is married to Mina, who is also Japanese though she grew up in Germany. While Joe and Mina now live in New York City, they also have strong ties to Japan.

Shorty after the quake and tsunami in Japan, Joe sent me a link to an article in Japan Times, a publication for which both Luke and Joe wrote. In his email Joe wrote,

It is an interesting piece, and for me, strangely, one of the most strongly emotional of any I have read so far. Ssomething about the use of the language, so incredibly Japanese, brings out the strength of will and spirit that we are seeing in people. I’m not sure if it will come through for you, too, but I found myself very struck by it.

In the article by Kaori Shoji, you’ll discover that  tensai means heavenly disaster.