During my 10-day homecoming trip to Japan,
I visited Kesennuma City in the Tohoku region, which was severely damaged by
the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last March. Eighteen months have passed since the
nightmare, but the recovery process has been slower than people had
expected.
Kesennuma is one of many Japanese cities
where people have closely lived together with the sea since ancient times. Facing the Pacific Ocean, Kesennuma is one of
Japan’s major fishing ports. It is
famous for shark fins, Pacific sauries, bonitos and tunas, and fishery has been
the city’s core industry.
The sea, however, provides harm as well as
blessings. The tsunami took away more
than 1,000 lives of Kesennuma’s citizens.
Fishermen lost their boats, without which they cannot make their
living. Waves wiped out buildings,
leaving a bare land as if nothing had stood there before.
Recovery has been painfully slow. True, the level of a catch is recovering, and
as the fishery recovers, the city is slowly coming back to life. However, there remain a number of abandoned
buildings and debris around the city center.
Most of the shops and restaurants are still operating in prefabricated
buildings. The scars of last year’s
earthquake and tsunami can be seen everywhere.
Slow city planning is allegedly one of the
factors that are causing a delay in recovery.
One of the local leaders told me that even if people own lands, they
cannot build buildings until the city decides where to embark and where to raise
the level of land. Thus, people’s lives
are still on hold after 18 months have passed since the disaster.
City planning has been taking time partly
because some crucial agendas are highly contentious. For example, construction of tide embankments
has become the hottest agenda in Kesennuma.
“Building tide embankments is a nonsense. Embankments cannot fully protect us. Rather, many people will die if we cannot see
whether the water is receding or not because of the structure,” a local
fisherman said. This claim has some
points. Coastal residents have gained
wisdom to communicate with the water, and a number of people actually escaped
death last year as they quickly responded to the receding water. At the same time, however, it is also true
that some residents living in other areas prefer to have embankments. What this suggests is that each area has
different needs and challenges and that a recovery plan may need to differ
across sections.
Recovery cannot be achieved without a close
communication with citizens. Local
people know their land better than anyone else, and bottom-up inputs are vital
to ensure a successful recovery.
Although it has been taking time, I believe it will not be a distant
future to see a lively Kesennuma, as the citizens of Kesennuma are full of
eagerness to recover from the disaster and to revitalize their hometown. As local posters say, “We will recover unless
we surrender.”
