KESEN, Japan – For centuries, this village has followed the currents of time: war and plagues, the sowing and harvesting of rice, the planting and cutting of trees.
Then the wave hit. Time has stopped. 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 the village of Kesen in Iwate province were killed. All but two of the 550 houses were destroyed.
After the waters subsided, almost all of the survivors fled. They left behind their destroyed possessions, the graves of their ancestors and the land that their ancestors had cultivated for generations.
But 15 residents refused to abandon Kesen and promised to rebuild it. Twice a year since 2011, Hiroko Maisuke, a photographer for The New York Times, visited the village to document the survivors’ almost doomed mission to rebuild their hometown.
“Our ancestors lived in this village 1,000 years ago,” said Naoshi Sato, 87, a woodcutter and farmer whose son was killed in the tsunami. “There have been disasters as well. Every time people stayed. They rebuilt and stayed. Rebuilt and remained. I feel an obligation to continue what my ancestors started. I don’t want to lose my hometown. “
Many of those who remained, including Mr. Sato, lived for months without electricity or running water. For a year, Mr. Sato camped in the stinking wreckage of his home. For a decade, he dreamed of Kesen’s revival.
Every day of that first year after the tsunami, he walked into the forest and, alone, cut down the trees he 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 chose to stay in Kesen were old in 2011. Now, in their 70s, 80s and 90s, they are even older. Slowly, over the past decade, a harsh reality has settled in this place: there is no turning back. Kesen will never be restored. This emptiness will last forever.
Mr. Sato is resigned, as his mission may have been in vain. Three houses were built and he prevented his former neighbor’s farms from deteriorating, but admits that without new residents, the village will die.
“I am very sad,” he said. “I’m sorry that people don’t come back.”
He blames the government. It took nine years and $ 840 million for the authorities to complete a project in which the elevated land above the village was converted into land for residential construction.
By this time, he said, it was too late. Almost everyone who left a decade ago built a new home elsewhere. Unlike other cities close to the city of Rikuzentakata, which have also received government funding, the new area elevated above the destroyed village lacks amenities, including shops and a supermarket.
“At the moment, due to the coronavirus pandemic, I am lucky to live here,” said Sato. To make sure that his ironic joke was understood, he added: “The air is clean and there are not many people.”
On the high ground, a handful of newly built houses appeared around the Kongoji Temple. Like the mythical nave of Theseus, whose component parts over time have all been replaced, Kongoji is the same temple that has been in the community for 1,200 years and an entirely new one built in 2017.
For centuries, the temple served as a community calendar, marking the time with 33 events a year. These rituals effectively stopped, but on Thursday, Nobuo Kobayashi, Kongoji’s chief monk, will welcome dispersed members of the community in Kesen for a memorial service.
Mr. Kobayashi worked tirelessly to ensure that families had a place to mourn their loved ones, but he is realistic about the temple echoing again with sounds other than regrets.
“Of course, I would like to rebuild the type 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 the fear; people are afraid of another tsunami. “
A birthday is an arbitrary but useful reminder of how time passes. Ten years is a satisfactorily round number, but it is only one of many numbers to measure the tragedy.
A decade seems like an eternity for someone who lost a child in a few seconds, but it is a brief moment in the history of Japan. It is an even shorter point in the billion-year history of plate tectonics, whose shredding changes triggered the earthquake and tsunami .
It is this long-term view of history that gives resisters the hope that Kesen will rise from the wreckage.
Senhor Sato, the logger, will turn 88 next week. He wakes up every morning at 6 and places a cup of green tea on the altar of his home – an offering to the spirits of his son and ancestors. And then, like his ancestors, he takes care of his rice field and his vegetable garden.
“I would like to see what this place will look like in 30 years,” he said. “But then, I will have to see this from heaven. And I don’t think that is possible. “
Reporting by Hiroko Masuike in Kesen, Japan.