{"id":78,"date":"2021-08-23T18:52:51","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T18:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/central-sendai\/"},"modified":"2021-08-23T20:15:42","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T20:15:42","slug":"central-sendai","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/migrated-posts\/central-sendai\/","title":{"rendered":"Central Sendai"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I walked into the center of Sendai on Tuesday and kicked around for a bit, just to get a sense of the what things looked like on the largest city to be seriously effected by the quake.\u00a0 It turned out to be a very nostalgic and in some ways surprising experience.<\/div>\n
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As you can see from this map of the municipalities in Miyagi Prefecture (lifted from the Miyagi Prefectural government website \u2013 kudos), Sendai stretches clear across the prefecture at its narrowest point.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The eastern edge bears upon the Pacific Ocean, and thus bore the brunt of the tsunami.\u00a0 As you would expect, this area became much more developed than the other side.\u00a0 Many factories in particular were located here, but the coast also was home to residential areas both old and new.\u00a0 The heart of Sendai, however \u2013 the part that most visitors see \u2013 is about 7 miles from the coast.\u00a0 This puts it outside of the area of greatest devastation.\u00a0 It also raises a question \u2013 or at least it did for me as I walked about the city \u2013 about how to define hisaichi<\/em>.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

The station that I arrived at the day before stands at what could be regarded as city center.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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To notice the effects of the quake in this part of the city, you have to know what to look for.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 In many cases, the damage involved shattered windows and bricks falling from the fa\u00e7ade \u2013 nothing too difficult to repair.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 At the same time, though, it also underscores how well the city fared the quake.\u00a0 There are of course buildings that suffered damage inside, too.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But during the course of my walk I didn\u2019t come across any buildings that had obviously been severely damaged.\u00a0 And this wasn\u2019t the case with just the newer structures in the immediate vicinity of the station.<\/p>\n

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You can see the netting and even a few cracks that have been patched up on the fa\u00e7ade, but the building still looks structurally sound and is apparently open for business.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>And this lack of damage is remarkable.\u00a0 Consider this: the epicenter of the March 11 temblor was roughly 82 miles (131km) to the east of central Sendai.\u00a0 This was an M9 quake.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The result was that, during the first few days, a major earthquake hit the area every 15 to 30 minutes.\u00a0 During the first month alone, more than 800 aftershocks of 4.5 or greater hit Tohoku. \u00a0\u00a0In 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) \u2013 although both had epicenters much closer to the cities they struck than the quake that hit Tohoku.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Hariu-san tells me that other parts of the city untouched by the tsunami fared much worse than the center.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In areas further to the mountainous western side, landslides wiped out many developments.\u00a0 The center survived thanks to a happy confluence of stringent building codes and solid bedrock.<\/p>\n

\u201cGanbare Sendai\/Miyagi\/Tohoku<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than traces of structural damage, our unaware visitor to the city\u2019s center might know that something big had happened from signs like these:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cGanbar\u014d Tohoku\/Miyagi!<\/em>\u201d (\u201cHang in there! Tohoku\/Miyagi\u201d) on the door of a small business office<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cGanbar\u014d Miyagi Sendai!!<\/em>\u201d (\u201cHang in there Miyagi Sendai!!\u201d) on the sign of a clothing boutique in Daiei Department Store<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cMina to tomo ni ganbar\u014d! Tohoku<\/em>\u201d (Tohoku \u2013 let\u2019s all hang in there together!\u201d) on the Westin Hotel tower<\/p>\n

\u201cGanbare<\/em>,\u201d \u201cgabar\u014d<\/em>,\u201d \u201cand the regional dialect version \u201cganbappe<\/em>\u201d \u2013 \u201chang in there\u201d \u2013 appear seemingly everywhere.\u00a0 Anyone who has studied the language or spent time in Japan knows that, even in normal times, the verb \u201cganbaru<\/em>\u201d gets used to the point of becoming a clich\u00e9.\u00a0 Here too, while the need to \u201chang in there\u201d seems more obvious, in light of the destruction and disruption that many in the region have to cope with, I can\u2019t help thinking that some might find it a bit irritating to be constantly reminded that they must \u201chang in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 There, however, the slogan is some variation of \u201cganbare Nippon<\/em>\u201d \u2013 \u201cHang in there, Japan.\u201d \u00a0IN contrast, the signs in Sendai all seem to cheer on the region \u2013 be it the city, the prefecture, or the greater Tohoku area \u2013 rather than the nation.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 This was one of a few pieces that had been submitted for display, although I\u2019m not sure by whom or under what circumstances.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe day will surely come when you will be glad you made it through alive.\u00a0 Believe this, don\u2019t give up, and live with strength!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShinsai homuresu<\/em>\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The new term to describe these people is \u201cshinsai homuresu<\/em>,\u201d or \u201cearthquake homeless.\u201d\u00a0 Homelessness is by no means a new phenomenon in Japan; especially since the early 1990s, after the collapse of the \u201cbubble economy,\u201d the homeless have become increasingly visible on the streets and in the parks of major cities like Tokyo and Osaka.\u00a0 Regional cities like Sendai had their share of homelessness, too, but the number of homeless have increased dramatically since the quake.\u00a0 In the course of my walk around the city center I didn\u2019t see individuals I could immediately identify as homeless.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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Later on, I saw similar bags left elsewhere, with no obvious owner in sight.\u00a0 This scene is from Ichiban-ch\u014d, a shopping street\/mall in the center of the city that is covered to protect pedestrians\/shoppers from the elements.<\/p>\n

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Where the owners of these belonging were \u2013 and why they weren\u2019t watching over their stuff, for that matter \u2013 I have no idea.\u00a0 One of the department stores I entered in the same part of town has tables and chairs by the escalators on every floor.\u00a0 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 \u2013 some of them with their heads down, sleeping \u2013 apparently with nothing else to do.\u00a0 Some of them may have just been people looking for a place to escape the heat, but I\u2019d been in this department store many times during similar weather, and I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Later that evening, I brought this up with Hariu-san.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The subject of the story was a young man who had a job at a factory that was destroyed by the tsunami.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 With no job and no place to live, he ended up in the underground crosswalk.<\/p>\n

Without a place to live, it\u2019s hard to find a job (even if anyplace is hiring \u2013 another problem in Tohoku these days); without a job, it\u2019s hard to rent an apartment \u2013 such is the crack this individual fell into.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This is another element that keeps people from leaving: without a job, there is no way to afford food \u2013 to say nothing of paying rent on a new place to live \u2013 no matter how much one may want to escape the heat, discomfort, and lack of privacy in the shelters.<\/p>\n

Contradictions abound to keep people were they are \u2013 even if it is no place.<\/p>\n

Stories from the early days: forbearance, desperation, and opportunism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Talk to anyone who was in Sendai on March 11 long enough, and you\u2019re sure to get on the subject of what life n the city was like during the first few weeks after the quake.\u00a0 This is true even for those who weren\u2019t displaced by the tsunami.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Electricity, natural gas, and water were disrupted citywide by the quake.\u00a0 How soon they were restored depended on where you lived.\u00a0 Hariu-san was lucky: his family lives just a few blocks from a large university hospital.\u00a0 In light of the emergency, power was restored to the neighborhood in a matter of days, and water soon after that.\u00a0 Gas took a bit longer, but within two weeks all utilities were back to normal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>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.\u00a0 Mariko-san lives in Izumi Ward \u2013 the northernmost part from the city that suffered more damage from the quake than did the central part of the city.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

This made me think about perceptions again.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And when this experience is prolonged \u2013 while people living just a short distance away have the fortune of regaining their normal lives in comparatively short order \u2013 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.\u00a0 For those displaced by the tsunami and still living in the shelters, the impact must be that much more severe by this point.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 as well as the creeping sense of dread that results from it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 \u201cThousands of people\u201d isn\u2019t just a figure of speech in this case; the lines apparently stretched for several city blocks.\u00a0 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 \u2013 the sense of desperation was that great.\u00a0 The same scene was repeated throughout the city at other shops as they opened, no matter what they specialized in.\u00a0 Even a small, mom-and-pop type shop specializing in electric appliances in Hariu-san\u2019s neighborhood was swamped \u2013 by people hoping to buy batteries.<\/p>\n

With so much demand and so little supply, one would expect incidents of theft and looting to take place.\u00a0 Here\u2019s where the Japanese media seems to differ from the American media in coverage of domestic disasters.\u00a0 In the US, the media tends to focus on the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of calamities.\u00a0 Reports of looting are always a staple of this coverage \u2013 especially when the looting involves minority groups.\u00a0 Japanese coverage of their own disasters, on the other hand, tends to downplay disorder.\u00a0 This seems particularly true in the current case, since doing so accords with the stereotype of people from Tohoku being \u201cgaman-zuyoi<\/em>\u201d (very good at putting up with adversity), a quality supposedly inherited through generations of comparative poverty and simplicity due to the region\u2019s harsh climate.<\/p>\n

In fact, there was looting after the quake and tsunami, and it was fairly widespread, although usually engaged in as secretly as possible.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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 \u201ctreasure hunting\u201d while they\u2019re there.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Maybe tomorrow\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I walked into the center of Sendai on Tuesday and kicked around for a bit, just to get a sense of the what things looked like on the largest city to be seriously effected by the quake.\u00a0 It turned out to be a very nostalgic and in some ways surprising experience. As you can see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"parent":694,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":713,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78\/revisions\/713"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/jbaylis3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}