Kesennuma's Struggle for Its Recovery from Tsunami

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.”