The earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 wiped out the ancient Japanese village of Kesen. For the past decade, a small group of survivors have valiantly tried to rebuild the community, but a grim reality has crept in: this void will last forever.
KESEN, Japan – For centuries, this village has been shaped by the currents of time: war and plague, rice sowing and harvesting, planting and tree felling.
Then the wave hit. Time stood still. And the village became history.
When a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami hit the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, more than 200 residents of Kesen village in Iwate Prefecture were killed. All but two of 550 houses were destroyed.
After the water receded, almost all of the survivors fled. They left behind their destroyed possessions, the graves of their ancestors, and the land their ancestors had farmed for generations.
But 15 residents refused to leave Kesen and vowed to rebuild. Since 2011, Hiroko Masuike, a photographer for the New York Times, has visited the village twice a year to document the survivors’ doomed mission to redesign their hometown.
“Our ancestors lived in this village 1,000 years ago,” said Naoshi Sato, 87, a lumberjack and farmer whose son was killed in the tsunami. “There were also disasters back then. Every time people stayed. They rebuilt and stayed. Rebuilt and stayed. I feel obliged to continue what my ancestors started. I don’t want to lose my hometown. “
Many of those who stayed, including Mr. Sato, lived without electricity or running water for months. For a year, Mr. Sato camped in the stinking ruins of his home. He has been dreaming of Kesen’s rebirth for a decade.
Every day for the first year after the tsunami, he hiked in the forest, cutting down the trees by himself that he had used to rebuild his two-bedroom house. When only two other families followed his example and rebuilt their homes, Mr. Sato’s wife and daughter-in-law realized the futility of his plan and left him behind.
Those who decided to stay in Kesen were old in 2011. Now, in the 70s, 80s and 90s, they are even older. Slowly, over the past ten years, a gloomy reality has settled over this place: There is no turning back. Kesen will never be restored. This emptiness will last forever.
Mr. Sato resigned that his mission might have been in vain. Three houses have been built and he has kept his former neighbor’s farmland from deteriorating, but admits that the village will die with no new residents.
“I am very sad,” he said. “I regret that people won’t be back.”
He blames the government. It took nine years and $ 840 million for authorities to complete a project to convert the hill above the village into land for housing.
Until then, it’s too late. Almost everyone who left a decade ago has found a new home elsewhere. Unlike other nearby towns in the town of Rikuzentakata, which have also received government funding, the new raised area above the destroyed village lacks amenities such as shops and a supermarket.
“Given the coronavirus pandemic, I am fortunate to live here,” said Sato. To make sure his joke was understood, he added, “The air is clean and there aren’t too many people.”
A handful of newly built houses have been built on the hill around the Kongoji Temple. Like the mythical ship of Theseus, whose components have all been replaced over time, Kongoji is both the same temple that has been in the community for 1,200 years and an entirely new one, built in 2017.
The temple has served as a community calendar for centuries, marking the time with 33 events per year. These rites have practically come to a standstill, but on Thursday, Nobuo Kobayashi, Kongoji’s chief monk, will greet the scattered members of the congregation for a memorial service in Kesen.
Mr. Kobayashi has worked tirelessly to ensure that families have a place to mourn loved ones, but he is realistic that the temple will keep reverberating with noises other than wails of grief.
“Of course I want to rebuild the kind of temple we had before the tsunami,” said Kobayashi. “But people don’t want to go back to the place where they lost friends and family. And there is fear; People are afraid of another tsunami. “
An anniversary is a haphazard but useful reminder of how time goes by. Ten years is a satisfactory round number, but it’s just one of many numbers that tragedy can be measured against.
A decade feels like forever to those who lost a child in just seconds, but it is a brief moment in the history of Japan. It is an even shorter point in the billions of years of history of the tectonic plates, the dragging of which triggered the earthquake and tsunami.
It is this long run of history that gives the holdouts hope that Kesen will rise from the rubble again.
Mr. Sato, the lumberjack, will be 88 years old next week. He wakes up at 6 a.m. every morning and puts a cup of green tea on his house altar – an offering to the spirits of his son and ancestors. And then, like his ancestors, he takes care of his rice field and vegetable patch.
“I would like to see what this place will look like in 30 years,” he said. “But until then I have to see it from the sky. And I don’t think that will be possible. “
Hiroko Masuike reported from Kesen, Japan.
