KESEN, Japan – This town has driven the currents of time for centuries: war and plague, the sowing and reaping of rice, the planting and felling of trees.
Then the wave hit. Time has stopped. And the town became history.
When a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami hit the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, more than 200 residents of the town of Kesen were killed in Iwate Prefecture. A total of 550 houses, except two, were destroyed.
After the waters receded, almost all who survived fled. They left behind their destroyed possessions, the graves of their ancestors and the land on which their ancestors farmed for generations.
But 15 residents refused to abandon Kesen and promised to rebuild. Since 2011, twice a year, Hiroko Maisuke, a photographer for The New York Times, has been visiting the town to document the survivors’ overall mission to recreate their hometown.
“Our ancestors lived in this town 1,000 years ago,” said Naoshi Sato, 87, a lumberjack and farmer whose son died in the tsunami. “There were disasters then too. Each time, the people stayed. They rebuilt and stayed. Rebuilt and remained. I feel an obligation to continue what my ancestors started. I do not want to lose my hometown. ”
Many of those who remained, including Mr. Sato, lived for months without power or running water. For a year, Mr. Sato camped in the wreckage of his house. For a decade, he has been dreaming of Kesen’s rebirth.
Every day from the first year after the tsunami, he moved into the forest and felled the trees with which he rebuilt his two-bedroom house. When only two other families follow his lead and rebuild their homes, Sato’s wife and daughter-in-law realize the futility of his plan and leave him behind.
Those who chose to stay in Kesen were old in 2011. Now in their 70s, 80s and 90s they are even older. Over the past decade, a gloomy reality has slowly come over this place: there is no going back. Kesen will never be restored. This emptiness will last forever.
Mr. Sato was resigned because his mission was in vain. Three houses were built and he did not deteriorate his former neighbor’s agricultural land, but he conceded that the town would die without new residents.
“I’m very sad,” he said. “I regret that people will not come back.”
He blames the government. It took nine years and $ 840 million for the authorities to complete a project in which the high land above the town was converted into land for residential construction.
Then he said it was too late. Almost everyone who left a decade ago has made a new home elsewhere. Unlike other nearby towns in the city of Rikuzentakata, which also received government funding, the new elevated area above the ruined village did not have enough amenities, including shops and a supermarket.
“At the moment, given the coronavirus pandemic, I’m happy to be living here,” he said. Sato said. To make sure his wry joke is understood, he added: “The air is clean and there are not too many people.”
On the high ground, a handful of newly built houses sprang up around the Kongoji Temple. Like the mythical ship of Theseus, whose parts have been replaced over time, Kongoji is both the same temple that has been in the community for 1200 years and a brand new one built in 2017.
The temple has served for centuries as a community calendar, indicating 33 periods per year. These rituals have effectively come to a halt, but on Thursday, Congolese monk Nobuo Kobayashi will welcome the scattered members of the community in Kesen for a memorial service.
Mr Kobayashi has worked tirelessly to ensure that families have a place to mourn over their loved ones, but he is realistic that the temple will resound with other sounds than mourning.
“Of course I would like to rebuild the kind of temple we had before the tsunami,” he said. Kobayashi said. ‘But people do not want to return to the place where they lost friends and family. And there is the fear; people are afraid of another tsunami. ”
A commemoration is an arbitrary but useful reminder of how time passes. Ten years is a satisfactory round number, but it is only one of the many figures to measure the tragedy.
A decade feels like an eternity to those who have lost a child within seconds, but it is a brief moment in the history of Japan. This is another shorter time in the billion-year history of the tectonic plates, whose grinding shifts caused the earthquake and tsunami.
It is the long view of history that gives hope that Kesen will rise from the wreck again.
Mr. Sato, the woodcutter, turns 8 next week. He wakes up every morning at 6 and places a cup of green tea on his altar – an offering to the spirits of his son and ancestors. And then, like his ancestors, he tends to his rice field and vegetable patch.
“I would like to see what this place will look like in 30 years from now,” he said. ‘But then I’ll have to see it from heaven. And I do not think it will be possible. ”
Reporting by Hiroko Masuike in Kesen, Japan.