The streets around Ishinomaki railway station offer a disarmingly gentle introduction to a city ravaged by the double disaster that struck north-eastern Japan’s coastline less than three years ago.
There is no immediate sign of the destruction the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami caused here and in dozens of other cities, towns and villages. Small groups of Christmas revellers spill out of restaurants on to icy pavements. Every few blocks, the monotony of shuttered shops is broken by statues of cartoon characters a nod to a nearby museum dedicated to the works of the manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori.
It is only when viewed from a nearby hilltop that the full extent of the destruction wrought on Ishinomaki, in Miyagi prefecture, becomes apparent. The city centre is no more. All that is left is a huge swath of flat land, reduced to rubble by the tsunami that struck on the afternoon of 11 March.
More than 4m tonnes of debris left in the tsunami’s wake has been removed. Reaching as high as 20 metres (66ft) in places, the waves destroyed or damaged more than 50,000 buildings. By the time the tsunami receded, 3,162 of Ishinomaki’s residents were dead. Around 430 are still missing.
Rebuilding the city, the worst affected of all the tsunami-hit communities, will take at least 10 years and cost more than 1 trillion yen (£5.8bn). That process will begin with repairs to the shattered port, sea walls, roads and bridges and other infrastructure. About Y100bn has been earmarked for new public housing, and Y120bn to relocate the 15,000 residents still living in temporary housing.
Almost three years on from one of the worst natural disasters in Japan’s history, it is tempting to conclude that little has changed since then. But there are signs that some semblance of civic life is returning, with the momentum provided by local residents frustrated by bureaucracy and political dawdling.
The Ishinomaki Genki Fukko [happy recovery] Centre opened in June 2012 to provide a handful of shop owners and restaurateurs with temporary premises while they attempt to rebuild their livelihoods. “We lost everything in the tsunami, and this grew out of a determination to get back to work as quickly as possible,” says Yumi
Funaoka, whose seafood store sells readymade dishes using locally caught fish.
“We were supposed to move out once our permanent premises had been rebuilt, but that is all behind schedule. We receive food orders from Tokyo and other places, but it’s nothing like on the same scale as before the tsunami.”
New look, new business
Other initiatives include adventure playgrounds, a library, cafés and bars, cheap accommodation for visitors, walking tours and a business “laboratory” that serves as a small-scale manufacturing hub.
Tadaima [“I’m back”] Ishinomaki sells bags, purses and other items made by women living in temporary housing, many of whom have no other source of income. “We asked the city for help, but we didn’t get much of a response so we decided to go ahead and open the shop ourselves,” says employee Wataru Horikomi. “We didn’t want to rely on handouts, and getting local people involved in the business gives them something to look forward to.”
The lack of employment opportunities is a recurring problem along the north-east coast of Japan, a region already in economic decline before the 2011 disaster. The tsunami destroyed thousands of jobs in Ishinomaki, and now there are two jobseekers for every opening in the city.
“Young people are leaving because there isn’t enough work,” Horikomi says. “The fishermen have been hit particularly hard. Some have gone back to work, but only a fraction of the number that were here before. They’re doing their best but because of the subsidence caused by the quake, the port goes underwater every time it rains heavily. The disaster broke the people’s connection with the sea.”
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