As you can see from this map of the municipalities in Miyagi Prefecture (lifted from the Miyagi Prefectural government website – kudos), Sendai stretches clear across the prefecture at its narrowest point. The western side, bordering on neighboring Yamagata Prefecture, is mountainous terrain; an uninformed visitor would probably not even guess that she or he was actually in a city of roughly one million people. The eastern edge bears upon the Pacific Ocean, and thus bore the brunt of the tsunami. As you would expect, this area became much more developed than the other side. Many factories in particular were located here, but the coast also was home to residential areas both old and new. The heart of Sendai, however – the part that most visitors see – is about 7 miles from the coast. This puts it outside of the area of greatest devastation. It also raises a question – or at least it did for me as I walked about the city – about how to define hisaichi. From an administrative and policy standpoint, of course, Sendai is classified as such, but here too, a visitor who suddenly appeared in the central part of the city, with no awareness of where they were or what had happened in the area on March 11, would probably have no idea that they were standing in what is technically a disaster area.
The station that I arrived at the day before stands at what could be regarded as city center. The view from here suggests anything but a city that was hit by one of the most powerful quakes in recorded history within recent months.
To notice the effects of the quake in this part of the city, you have to know what to look for.
The netting draped over buildings is usually a sign, so I am told, of a structure that received some sort of external damage in the earthquake. In many cases, the damage involved shattered windows and bricks falling from the façade – nothing too difficult to repair. The relatively light degree of the damage in this part of town may indeed account for why you find so few building like these now, four months on; most of the repairs have already been completed. At the same time, though, it also underscores how well the city fared the quake. There are of course buildings that suffered damage inside, too. Some of the places I entered had scaffolding up with tarps hung over it to protect the rest of the interior from dust generated by the repair work. But during the course of my walk I didn’t come across any buildings that had obviously been severely damaged. And this wasn’t the case with just the newer structures in the immediate vicinity of the station.
You can see the netting and even a few cracks that have been patched up on the façade, but the building still looks structurally sound and is apparently open for business. I came across only a few shops that were shuttered, with notices informing people that the business was closed for remodeling due to damage from the quake.
And this lack of damage is remarkable. Consider this: the epicenter of the March 11 temblor was roughly 82 miles (131km) to the east of central Sendai. This was an M9 quake. Converted to TNT, the amount of energy released at the center of the quake, when something snapped and the plates began to slide past each other, was on the order of 476 megatons. Beginning immediately after it struck, aftershocks as strong as M7 (100 times less powerful than the M9 monster, but a major quake nonetheless) occurred in the same vicinity. The result was that, during the first few days, a major earthquake hit the area every 15 to 30 minutes. During the first month alone, more than 800 aftershocks of 4.5 or greater hit Tohoku. In contrast, the Loma Prieta earthquake that heavily damaged San Francisco in 1989 was M6.9, and the Great Hanshin Earthquake that nearly destroyed Kobe in 1995 was M6.8 (or M7.2 by some calculations) – although both had epicenters much closer to the cities they struck than the quake that hit Tohoku. Even so, in light of the magnitudes and number of aftershocks involved, the fact that buildings remain standing at all in Sendai is quite impressive.
Hariu-san tells me that other parts of the city untouched by the tsunami fared much worse than the center. Although his home escaped with just some damage to the exterior, in Izumi Ward to the north there are still many buildings awaiting repair and others that have been condemned and must be torn down. In areas further to the mountainous western side, landslides wiped out many developments. The center survived thanks to a happy confluence of stringent building codes and solid bedrock.
“Ganbare Sendai/Miyagi/Tohoku”
More than traces of structural damage, our unaware visitor to the city’s center might know that something big had happened from signs like these:
“Ganbarō Tohoku/Miyagi!” (“Hang in there! Tohoku/Miyagi”) on the door of a small business office
“Ganbarō Miyagi Sendai!!” (“Hang in there Miyagi Sendai!!”) on the sign of a clothing boutique in Daiei Department Store
“Mina to tomo ni ganbarō! Tohoku” (Tohoku – let’s all hang in there together!”) on the Westin Hotel tower
“Ganbare,” “gabarō,” “and the regional dialect version “ganbappe” – “hang in there” – appear seemingly everywhere. Anyone who has studied the language or spent time in Japan knows that, even in normal times, the verb “ganbaru” gets used to the point of becoming a cliché. Here too, while the need to “hang in there” seems more obvious, in light of the destruction and disruption that many in the region have to cope with, I can’t help thinking that some might find it a bit irritating to be constantly reminded that they must “hang in there.”
There is one thing I found interesting about these signs, though: one can find them, with less frequency albeit, in other parts of Japan too. There, however, the slogan is some variation of “ganbare Nippon” – “Hang in there, Japan.” IN contrast, the signs in Sendai all seem to cheer on the region – be it the city, the prefecture, or the greater Tohoku area – rather than the nation.
A bit of artwork I found posted in a display case in front of the central post office seemed to express what I imagine might seem a more encouraging sentiment for those who were hardest hit. This was one of a few pieces that had been submitted for display, although I’m not sure by whom or under what circumstances.
“The day will surely come when you will be glad you made it through alive. Believe this, don’t give up, and live with strength!”
“Shinsai homuresu”
If that message was meant for anyone who might see it on the streets of central Sendai, it may well have been for the newest people to join the ranks for the homeless in Japan. The new term to describe these people is “shinsai homuresu,” or “earthquake homeless.” Homelessness is by no means a new phenomenon in Japan; especially since the early 1990s, after the collapse of the “bubble economy,” the homeless have become increasingly visible on the streets and in the parks of major cities like Tokyo and Osaka. Regional cities like Sendai had their share of homelessness, too, but the number of homeless have increased dramatically since the quake. In the course of my walk around the city center I didn’t see individuals I could immediately identify as homeless. As I walked through an underground crossing (built below a busy intersection to allow pedestrians to cross without interrupting the flow of traffic above), I came across their belongings, however.
Later on, I saw similar bags left elsewhere, with no obvious owner in sight. This scene is from Ichiban-chō, a shopping street/mall in the center of the city that is covered to protect pedestrians/shoppers from the elements.
Where the owners of these belonging were – and why they weren’t watching over their stuff, for that matter – I have no idea. One of the department stores I entered in the same part of town has tables and chairs by the escalators on every floor. As I rode up the escalator yesterday, I noted that all of the tables were occupied, many of them by people who just seemed to be sitting there – some of them with their heads down, sleeping – apparently with nothing else to do. Some of them may have just been people looking for a place to escape the heat, but I’d been in this department store many times during similar weather, and I don’t recall seeing these seats, sandwiched in a narrow space between the elevators and the windows at the front of the building on each floor, so fully occupied.
Later that evening, I brought this up with Hariu-san. He told me that he had seen a story on one of the homeless people living in the underground crosswalk that I had visited earlier. The subject of the story was a young man who had a job at a factory that was destroyed by the tsunami. This meant that he not only lost his job, but also had to leave the company dormitory in which he had been living, even though the dorm itself was not damaged. Having nowhere to live, he returned to his hometown of Minami-soma, Fukushima Prefecture, but his family home had also been destroyed by the tsunami. This is where official procedures heaped tragedy upon tragedy: when the man tried to gain admittance to the shelter established for the displaced of Minami-soma, he was turned away because he had not established residence there during the early days of the disaster. With no job and no place to live, he ended up in the underground crosswalk.
Without a place to live, it’s hard to find a job (even if anyplace is hiring – another problem in Tohoku these days); without a job, it’s hard to rent an apartment – such is the crack this individual fell into. Shut out of the shelters, he also lost another element of support enjoyed by many with only slightly better luck than his: those residing in the shelters currently receive five thousand yen ($63) a day from the central government. This is another element that keeps people from leaving: without a job, there is no way to afford food – to say nothing of paying rent on a new place to live – no matter how much one may want to escape the heat, discomfort, and lack of privacy in the shelters.
Contradictions abound to keep people were they are – even if it is no place.
Stories from the early days: forbearance, desperation, and opportunism
Talk to anyone who was in Sendai on March 11 long enough, and you’re sure to get on the subject of what life n the city was like during the first few weeks after the quake. This is true even for those who weren’t displaced by the tsunami. Although you would never guess it from the way it appears now, even the central areas of Sendai were a different world in the immediate aftermath of the quake. Electricity, natural gas, and water were disrupted citywide by the quake. How soon they were restored depended on where you lived. Hariu-san was lucky: his family lives just a few blocks from a large university hospital. In light of the emergency, power was restored to the neighborhood in a matter of days, and water soon after that. Gas took a bit longer, but within two weeks all utilities were back to normal.
In contrast, another friend, Mariko (whom I had not seen in at least 20 years, since the first time I lived in Sendai) told me that things played out very differently in her neighborhood. Mariko-san lives in Izumi Ward – the northernmost part from the city that suffered more damage from the quake than did the central part of the city. The restoration of utilities there took much longer, to the point that she claims you could tell people who lived in Izumi Ward from people living in the central ward of Aoba, just by observing their appearance: people from Aoba returned to their pre-quake appearance within a couple of weeks; in contrast, residents of much of Izumi looked unwashed and unkempt for well over a month.
This made me think about perceptions again. For people who take regular bathing, wearing clean clothes, and living in heated homes during the colder months for granted, the experience of losing all of these in a stroke must come as quite a shock. And when this experience is prolonged – while people living just a short distance away have the fortune of regaining their normal lives in comparatively short order – one can only imagine what this would do to your self-confidence and even your fundamental perception of who you are in relation to others as time goes on. For those displaced by the tsunami and still living in the shelters, the impact must be that much more severe by this point.
Whether from Aoba or Izumi, though, the one experience that everyone seems to have shared in the days after the quake was that of shortage – as well as the creeping sense of dread that results from it. Mariko-san told me that since her neighborhood recovered from the quake she makes sure to have enough food and supplies at home to support her family for at least a month. Hariu-san spoke of lines of thousands of people, all queuing up to buy food at the supermarkets in the basements of the centrally located department stores, which were some of the first sources of food to open after the quake. “Thousands of people” isn’t just a figure of speech in this case; the lines apparently stretched for several city blocks. Those at the back of it must have realized that they stood very little chance of finding anything left for sale by the time they reached the store, but they stayed in line anyway – the sense of desperation was that great. The same scene was repeated throughout the city at other shops as they opened, no matter what they specialized in. Even a small, mom-and-pop type shop specializing in electric appliances in Hariu-san’s neighborhood was swamped – by people hoping to buy batteries.
With so much demand and so little supply, one would expect incidents of theft and looting to take place. Here’s where the Japanese media seems to differ from the American media in coverage of domestic disasters. In the US, the media tends to focus on the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of calamities. Reports of looting are always a staple of this coverage – especially when the looting involves minority groups. Japanese coverage of their own disasters, on the other hand, tends to downplay disorder. This seems particularly true in the current case, since doing so accords with the stereotype of people from Tohoku being “gaman-zuyoi” (very good at putting up with adversity), a quality supposedly inherited through generations of comparative poverty and simplicity due to the region’s harsh climate.
In fact, there was looting after the quake and tsunami, and it was fairly widespread, although usually engaged in as secretly as possible. The shortage of gasoline across the region, on the one hand, and the prevalence of cars rendered useless by the tsunami, on the other, apparently led many to siphon gas from the tanks of disabled vehicles. Likewise, people entered homes that had been severely damaged but were left standing in the wake of the tsunami in search of food, clothing, and whatever else of use they could find. More unforgivable were the cases of theft in towns within the government-mandated evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant; the government has recently begun to let residents return to their homes and businesses for very short periods since the order was issued, but many have returned to find that their property has been plundered in their absence. There are even rumors of people volunteering to help with the relief efforts in the hardest hit areas as a pretext to do a bit of “treasure hunting” while they’re there.
I have yet to make it to the area hit by the tsunami, due to rain from a typhoon that missed Tohoku but has brought plenty of moisture anyway. Maybe tomorrow…