After the tsunami in Japan in 2011, a city is rebuilt – now it needs people to survive

With state-led financial support waning, Rikuzentakata struggles to avoid the decline seen in other rural parts of Japan. Many survivors have settled elsewhere, and large tracts of land in the city center have yet to be used.

Momiko Kinno pushed her elderly mother in a cart to escape the wave that took her home and thousands of others in Rikuzentakata on March 11, 2011. After eight years in a temporary shelter, Ms. Kinno, now 75, has moved to a new two-story house in the city center, surrounded by vacant lots and “for sale” signs. His son and daughter moved to other cities to work.

“I don’t think a lot of people are going to come back here,” she said.

The disaster recovery work of 2011 on the northeast coast of Japan, including the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has been one of the most expensive revitalization projects in the world. Public spending so far is almost $ 300 billion. The US government spent about $ 110 billion on recovery after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The commercial and residential heart of Rikuzentakata, which lies on a low coastal plain, was almost completely swept away, and the city alone was responsible for about one tenth of the deaths in the worst natural disaster in postwar Japan. In 2014, a project started using soil and rock from the top of a mountain to raise the central area by more than 20 feet. The final sections are due to be completed this year as part of land reconstruction works that cost more than $ 1.4 billion.

In 2017, a 12-meter-high concrete wall that stretches for over a kilometer along the bay close to the city was completed, part of 270 kilometers of new breakwaters built in the region since the disaster.

The reconstruction created a “disaster bubble,” said Masayuki Kimura, whose family home and bakery were destroyed by the tsunami. Kimura restarted her business with an old train car and quickly doubled her pre-tsunami sales when an influx of disaster workers, volunteers and tourists bought her German-style baumkuchen layer cakes and other goodies.

The city government, or state, temporarily took on its $ 300,000 debt, and he managed to borrow more, moving his business to larger facilities twice, most recently in 2015 to a European brick building on a hill on the edge of the city.

With recovery work almost complete and short-term visitors reduced, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, Kimura’s sales fell 20% from the peak. The 63-year-old man still has $ 900,000 in bank debt. He is working on developing cakes for vegans and people with allergies as a way to increase online sales.

“I realized that in order to survive, I have to compete with stores in other cities,” he said.

The government offered subsidies and debt relief to companies in the disaster region as part of its 10-year recovery plan. He says that a new five-year package, $ 15 billion, will be aimed primarily at supporting individuals, including mental health.

The mayor of Rikuzentakata, Futoshi Toba, wants more assistance to revive the local economy now that the reconstruction is over. Less than half of the city’s reclaimed land is in use.

“We finally created the conditions to try to attract companies back here, at a time when government support programs are shrinking,” he said.

Toba, who started work two months before the disaster and lost his wife in the tsunami, said the decision to expand large areas of the city was meant to encourage people to stay, but the protracted project contributed to the loss of population.

“People can tolerate living in temporary accommodation for a year or two, but when they are seven or eight, they will consider options elsewhere,” he said.

Thousands were forced to live temporarily or moved from Rikuzentakata after the disaster. The city’s population was 18,601 at the end of February, a drop of almost 25% over the previous decade.

In an unusual turnaround, the birth rate in Rikuzentakata rose briefly to become one of the highest in Japan after the disaster, a phenomenon sometimes seen after major earthquakes. It is now in line with the national average, well below the level needed to maintain population stability.

With the current rate of decline, the population of Rikuzentakata will be halved by 2060. More than 50% of residents are expected to be over 65 in 2040.

Oyster breeder Sakae Yoshida used to have 30 employees, but now he has eight because most have retired. The bay near Rikuzentakata is known for its plump, fist-sized oysters supplied to luxury hotels in Tokyo. The tsunami created better growing conditions for oysters by dredging the seabed, but it is difficult to make the most of the opportunity, said Yoshida.

“Everyone has aged and there is no one to take on the job,” said the 73-year-old man as he and his wife finished picking the day’s harvest in a small factory near the tsunami wall.

Some young people came back. Rinnosuke Yoshida, 24, returned to Rikuzentakata last summer to work on his grandparents’ vegetable farm after attending college near Tokyo and a brief stint working in advertising sales. Most of his friends from high school moved to other cities.

Rinnosuke Yoshida, who is not related to the oyster breeder, said he preferred the fresh country air and lived by the sea. He also said he was motivated by the wishes of his father, Toshiyuki, who wanted to work on the family farm after retiring, but was killed in the tsunami.

His 87-year-old grandfather and 82-year-old grandmother sometimes tell how he looks and talks just like Toshiyuki, who was their son. Toshiyuki was a baseball coach at Rinnosuke’s school. Both Rinnosuke and his older brother, who lives in the provincial capital, were enthusiastic baseball players. Rinnosuke recently started playing again with a local team.

On March 11, he hopes to take his mother and grandparents to the family’s grave to pay tribute to his father. “I am not torn apart by his death, but of course I sometimes want to see him,” he said.

He hopes to get married this year to his high school sweetheart, who is training to become a nurse. She will find out in March if she passed the exams to qualify. They plan to stay in Rikuzentakata and start a family.

Write to Alastair Gale at [email protected] and Miho Inada at [email protected]