Hana-chan and Yama-chan, at a soba restaurant in Watanoha

Of all the people I met at Watanohaus, Yamamoto Ryuji – “Yama-chan,” as everyone called him – is probably the most deserving of his own post on this blog.  This is not only because he had been at the house the longest of any of its residents, outside of the JEN staffers, although his unusually long tenure had made him far more knowledgeable about the situation in and around Ishinomaki than most volunteers.  More than this, it was why Yama-chan was there in the first place, and what he wanted to achieve, that made a lasting impression.  Through conversations with him, I gained a much better sense of the problems and pitfalls that loom as Tohoku moves toward reconstruction.

Yama-chan was a native of what he described as the sticks of Hiroshima Prefecture, a place far removed from the famous city from which the prefecture takes its name.  He claims that his hometown was so rural that the only gaijin – by which he meant non-East Asian looking people – he saw while growing up were on TV or in movies.  Despite this – or perhaps because of it – he had an intense fascination with American culture as a youth, or at least the interpretation of it that was prevalent in Japan at the time.  Growing up in the 1970s and early 80s, this meant that Yama-chan’s understanding of what America was like was shaped by movies like American Graffiti and Grease.  It was a vision of the 1950s twice romanticized: once by Hollywood, and again by the Japanese appreciation of that Hollywood image.  In this America everyone was friendly and happy; everyone expressed him- or herself with exaggerated words and gestures; and all of them were very, very white.  But more than anything else, the element of resistance to authority in this vision of America was probably what drew the young Yama-chan to embrace it and adopt something of the style he saw in these films as his own.  Yama-chan was a self-admitted “yanki,” a Japanese term derived from the homophonous English word, used in Japan at the time to refer to kids with a bad attitude toward authority who rejected the mold of the serious student set on surviving “examination hell” to enter the best university possible.

But those wild years were far behind him.  Now 41, Yama-chan works for a company called B&D Japan (KK), which makes a variety of products used for cleaning and deodorization.  There were plenty of places for such products to be employed in the disaster zone.  The sludge that the tsunami dumped seemingly everywhere gave off stenches that ranged from rotting fish and seaweed to heavy oil and other industrial chemicals.  In the shelters, damaged sewerage lines, a lack of running water during the early days after the tsunami, and the fact that hundreds of refugees had to make do with these facilities produced a sanitation nightmare.  Yama-chan contacted JEN about volunteering his time and his company’s services in the Ishinomaki area in May, and then drove all the way up from Hiroshima Prefecture in an old, sub-compact pickup truck loaded with detergents, odor neutralizers, and sprayers to apply them.  He has been in Ishinomaki more-or-less constantly since.

B&D Japan is not the only company applying its products in Tohoku as part of the ongoing effort to clean up after the tsunami and its aftermath.  One big advantage of B&D’s products, however, is that they are environmentally friendly.  Strong chemical odor neutralizers work by masking the odor while attempting to kill the bacteria that create it.  There are two drawbacks to this approach: first, the fact that they can kill “bad” bacteria also means that they are potentially harmful to the environment if they soak into the earth and enter the ground water.  Second, one has to apply a lot of these chemicals to get the job done; otherwise, the bacteria that survive only come back with a vengeance weeks later.   B&D’s products, which Yama-chan took the lead in developing, employ bacteria and other organic compounds that hold odor-producing bacteria in check, while breaking down all the material that those bacteria fed on, without producing odor in the process.  These “good” bacteria also break down oil and other toxic chemicals in the sludge, eventually rendering it no more harmful than ordinary dirt.

Basically the same mixture can also be used as a detergent.  Yama-chan demonstrated this for me, putting his product up against a popular synthetic laundry detergent to show how it was more effective at cleaning clothes than the commercial brand, even in dirty water.  He added a few drops of ink to two containers of water and stirred them well, producing two containers of black water.  Then to each of these he added two spoonfuls of detergent – the brand-name synthetic compound in one, and his in the other.  He capped and shook both containers vigorously, and then removed the caps to show me the difference.  While both mixtures were equally dark from the ink he had added, the one containing the synthetic compound had produced a thick head of black foam, whereas Yama-chan’s detergent yielded much less foam.  “Foam is a big problem is dealing with synthetic detergents once they get into the environment,” he informed me, “because it lasts for a very long time and continues to release the synthetic compounds into the rivers and streams as it breaks up.”

Then he dunked a small strip of white cotton gauze into each container, capped them, and shook each again.  He fished the gauze out of each container and then rinsed the strips out in clean water.  The difference was obvious: although the ink had colored both pieces, the strip soaked in Yama-chan’s mixture was a light grey in color, whereas the strip in the container with the synthetic detergent was almost black.  “This detergent makes it much harder for ink, dirt, and other stuff to adhere to the fibers of the fabric than the synthetic compound does.”

Here’s the link to the same demo, which he posted on YouTube.  Yama-chan’s product is on the left of your screen (in the plastic bag, not he bottle), and his arms and torso appear in the background:

He had spent the last two and a half months doing more than just applying his products in cooperation with JEN’s work, however; he had also come up with a big idea to help put people in some of the devastated communities back to work and contribute to the local economy.

“The problem in a lot of the hisaichi areas – and especially around Ishinomaki – is that you have a population that is mostly old folks.  All of the industries that they used to work in – fishing and processing the catch, cultivating oysters, wakame, and other marine products – all of those businesses have been heavily damaged.  Most are just starting to come back, if they’re doing anything at all.  Meanwhile, the local and prefectural governments seem focused on clearing the debris and sludge as the first step, then rebuilding infrastructure next.  That needs to be done, of course, but the problem is: what the hell are the people here supposed to do to survive and maintain their sense of self-worth in the meantime?  Sure, the government can keep handing out emergency rations. But that’s no way to rebuild an economy, nor is it a way anyone would want to live.  If this keeps up, the young people who still are in the area will all move out in search of jobs, and the only people left will be the old folks with no place else to go.  If that happens, these towns and villages are pretty much done for.”

Yama-chan’s remedy to this situation was simple, straightforward, and creative.  The detergent that he demonstrated for me is easy to produce.  With as little as thirty million yen (about $395,000 even at today’s exchange rate) in start-up capital, he figured he could set up a small factory to produce it in one of the communities around Ishinomaki, employing local residents to work there.  The packaging of the finished product would take place in small workshops established in other communities nearby, in the areas where residents would be temporarily housed until the government came up with a permanent zoning and financial solution to their residential problems.  Residents in these communities would be employed on short-term contracts of about 20 days each to package the product and prepare it for distribution.  They would receive a daily wage for this work.  Those who wished to could renew their contracts as often as they wanted; the point of the short term was simply to make it possible for those employed to return to work in their original occupations as soon as those industries made a come back.

In the meantime, though, employment would provide not only an income, but with it a sense of self-esteem.  “Being a charity case can really take its toll,” Yama-chan postulated, “Many of these folks have worked hard all their lives, and are proud of it.  Telling them that they have to make due with government relief for the foreseeable future, just because the government hasn’t gotten around yet to fixing the damage that makes it impossible for them to do their jobs, is no way to go about revitalization.”

For his part, Yama-chan told me that he would settle in the area permanently to oversee the business.  “If everything works out right, by this time next year I’ll officially be a resident of Miyagi Prefecture – I’m giving up on Hiroshima, except for my mom, of course,” he declared, with a trace of pride, although he admitted that the decision was motivated more by tax concerns than by a sense of Miyagi nationalism.

Making everything work out right, however, was easier said than done.  Getting the start-up capital was the first problem.  Yama-chan told me that he had only two million yen for the project at the moment, leaving 28 million left to obtain – somehow.  Since the idea was to maximize the portion of the profits that went to the workers (aside from the costs of marketing and expanding operations as needed), he didn’t want to borrow that kind of money from a bank.  Soon after he hit upon the idea, he learned that the prefectural government had established a program to provide low-interest loans to companies interested in setting up shop in Miyagi.  When he went to inquire about getting a 30 million-yen loan for the project, however, he ran into the same kind of inflexibilities that typically plague bureaucracies.  He learned that the amount of the loans to be disbursed under the program was fixed – for whatever reason – at 500 million yen (about 6.5 million dollars), and only proposals that could make a case for requiring that level of funding would be considered.  The prefectural government was apparently not interested in assisting small-to-medium sized firms.

He has made some progress, though.  The trip to Onagawa that I accompanied him on was in part to inquire about the possibility of establishing the primary production facility there.  While no firm deals have been worked out yet, Yama-chan said that the officials at city hall he talked to were very enthusiastic about his idea and the possibility of bringing the jobs it would create into their community.  They could even give him a deal on the land.  The only problems were where the land would actually be and when it would be available.  The town and the prefecture are still discussing what to do about the land in the areas inundated.  It will most likely be designated off-limits for residential development, but the question remains of whether it will be cleared for commercial development or not.  The town should have its plans for the land formulated by September.  Whether these will fly with the prefectural and central governments or not is another matter.

Yama-chan has come up with an idea for raising the start-up capital on his own, though.

His work in the Ishinomaki area means that he gets to know a lot of different folks: volunteers from various organizations, local officials, and survivors still living in the shelters, as well as many who have returned to homes they are trying to rebuild.

One area he has come to know particularly well is the community of Oshika, about 25km southeast of Ishinomaki, on the tip of the peninsula from which the town gets its name.  My main reason for accompanying him on his trip to Onagawa was to visit Oshika on the way back and drop off a box containing 70 t-shirts with a group of young volunteers working there, who have organized a flea market called the “Oshika Fukkō-ichi” (Oshika Reconstruction Market) with the help of the local residents.  The volunteers sell items they receive in donation at very low prices to the residents (they told me that they’d probably ask 100 to 200 yen – $1.30 to $2.60 – for each t-shirt), and use the money they raise to buy more supplies to sell.

I had brought these t-shirts all the way from Connecticut after purchasing them with money I collected from members of the Greater Hartford Aikikai and their friends.  There were also 25 Trinity College t-shirts in the bunch, which had been donated to me through the generosity of Paul Mutone, Vice President for Finance and Operations at Trinity, and Jimmy Jones, President of the same.  I had first approached the JEN staff in the Tokyo office about donating these shirts to an evacuation center, since I figured that the people living there would have lost all of their summer clothes along with their homes.  After some consideration, though, the folks in the Tokyo office said that they weren’t sure if there was a shelter in Ishinomaki that could use the shirts, and they advised me not to bring them.  Problem was, I had already arrived in Japan with the shirts by that point, and I sure wasn’t going to be taking them back home with me at the end of the trip.  I brought them to Watanohaus and consulted with Yama-chan, who suggested that donating them to the flea market in Oshika would be a better way to get these shirts to people who could use them than donating them directly to a shelter – for reasons I shall describe in a future post.

Local residents also sell things at the market, and this was what brought Yama-chan back on this particular visit.  We made our way along the rows of canvas canopies until we came to one under which stood a very friendly couple in their sixties behind a folding table loaded with bottles of various kinds of sake, shochu, wine, and hard liquor.

Yama-chan had met them before and introduced me to the Abes (of no relation to my friend Takumi – Abe is a very common name up in these parts).  The Abes used to run a liquor store in Oshika, which, like so much else in the town, all-but disappeared in the tsunami.  After the water receded and they went back to survey the ruins of their store and home, they discovered that a substantial number of bottles in their stock had miraculously survived intact.  These they dug out of the sludge, washed off, and were now offering for sale at the market – at more than 50% off their original prices.  They made no guarantees on the quality of the contents, but it was clear that the bottles had never been opened.  Yama-chan selected four bottles: a Japanese scotch (Suntory Special Reserve), a bottle of red wine that appeared to be a cabernet (the label was so damaged it was hard to read), a 1.8 liter bottle of shochu made from chestnuts (rather rare in itself, even without the tsunami adding value to it), and a bottle of Jose Cuervo Special (why he bought that, I have no idea).  He paid just five thousand yen for the lot – far below the market price for all four.

Yama-chan told the Abes he would be back again.  Then we got into the pickup with the bottles – but without the t-shirts – and headed back to Ishinomaki.  I still didn’t get it.

“You’re not gonna drink this stuff, are you?”  I asked.

Yama-chan laughed, “No, no – this is for raising capital.”

When I confessed that I didn’t see his point, he explained: the idea was to write a description of where these bottles had come from, what they had been through, and what he hoped to achieve by setting up shop in the Ishinomaki area.  Then he would put these bottles up for sale on eBay, accompanied by this explanation – warning people (as the Abes had) that they would drink the contents at their own risk.  If the items seemed to be bringing in a lot of bids, he’d go back to Oshika and buy more, perhaps even the whole lot – giving the Abes a nice cut of the action, of course.

“I know that there are plenty of people in this world with plenty of money, but also witha sense of humanity that  might interest them in spending some of it on something like this.  Hell –it’s a lot better than buying stuff that does no good for anyone ‘cept other rich folks, so why not something like this?  How many people can say that they own a bottle of booze that survived the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, right?”

Yama-chan asked me to do the translation for the English blurb of the eBay postings, and I gladly agreed.  I don’t know if this will work the way he hopes that it will.  In light of the recent economic downturns in the US and Europe – and Japan’s resulting stagnation – I have my doubts.  Then again, the super rich never seem to be wanting for money or things to spend it on.  We’ll see.  Yama-chan told me the other day that the items aren’t up for sale yet (he’s waiting for his PayPal account to get set up), but when they are, he’ll let me know.

And I will do the same on the blog.  Anyone up for a nice bottle of waterlogged cabernet, or maybe some Jose Cuervo that outlasted one of the worst tsunamis in recorded history?  Imagine the hangover you’d get from just a bit of that…

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