A New Life
Am sunburnt and tired from my rather rushed tour of the tsunami coast near Sendai this weekend. But met some amazing people on this trip: ones I hope to see again with more time and more direction to the images I take. Their stories deserve that.
Not least among those people were the residents of the temporary housing village I came across in Watari. In a striking collection of ordered shantiness, ninety small, identical houses filled a gravel car park next to the police station with row upon row of tedious practicality. Not that the scene was completely without some charm, as is the Japanese way, flower boxes stood at the end of the “streets” and around some of the entrances to the homes; splash of colour were painted on a wall here and there and the slowly developing sense of a real home was visible in the additions and decorations people had begun to add to their houses. People only moved-in here on May 22nd and living conditions were still makeshift. For example I met a man adding an awning and porch to the house of one of his friends in an effort to diffuse the sound of the rain which, he informed me, could be deafening. The wood of the new porch was fresh, rough and bright yellow. People expect to be here for two years another resident told me and will make the best of the situation. One street over another house had exactly the same awning, maybe soon everyone will have it.
Some aspects of normality remain: the sound of such DIY one of those, but people also like to enjoy their Sunday evenings relaxing and of course I could hear the murmur of televisions or the sound of a cup being put on a table or a plate scraping from a shelf as I walked around looking for people to talk to. Such sound didn’t travel far but were clear when you stood next to where they came from, the other side of the thin walls barely hiding the identity of the action beyond. Everyone I saw was speaking in whispers. Every window was open and every door ajar and it was easy to eavesdrop or peek in on the lives inside. Privacy was at best fleeting and though I thought this openness a result of the sense of community each refugee must feel the more I sweated on my wanders the more I realized the July heat must be magnified by the flat-roofs of these tiny houses pressing hard against the sky. Shishido Musotaro, whom I photographed as he squatted for a cigarette at the end of his row, was certainly glad to escape the heat inside for a moment of tobacco-fueled relaxation but the view that accompanied his escape can not have been as comforting as similar breaks he took in the nearby coastal village of Arahama where he and everyone else here had originally come from.
People I spoke to were not complaining though. Even tough these tiny houses were obviously not perfect they provided a more comfortable life than the forced intimacies of the evacuation centres many had been in since the quake and tsunami struck on March 11th. Even surrounded by friends and family it was obviously good to be able to shut the door on them sometimes and deal with your own emotions privately. Two older women excitedly swopping vegetables for their dinner tonight told me that they even liked it here.
“The house is tiny of course, but it can’t be helped.”
The thought of fresh food and a more daring menu provided a chance to smile for both. Husbands were at home waiting on dinners and life was more normal than either dared to believe it could ever be again. Both their families had survived however and perhaps it was easier for them adjust as they took all the important things with them as they moved through this life of uncertainty.
Not so Kazuko Takuyoshi, who I met when I had asked to photograph her 4 year old granddaughter, Noa. I had seen no other children in the village but Noa was unforgettable. I first saw her dancing around the streets in that way children have of celebrating the simple act of movement. Catching up with her at her house I’d asked to take her picture and she’d said “Yes!”
Wanting to clear it with an adult first I asked if her mother was there and very quickly she had answered, in English, “No!”
She then called out for her grandmother and as she did so I knew exactly what had happened. I felt sad and stupid at doing that: a simple request at any other time and place here could be loaded with rage, grief and a rapidly clarifying empathy. I felt cruel for asking, for not even thinking about the possibility and being more careful.
Her grandmother and older brother, Ryotaro came out and I took some pictures. The kids put up peace signs, which I ordinarily hate, but this time I didn’t mind. There was a normality to it that belied the understanding I drew from the picture I had just taken. As the children ran off to play, Kazuko San confirmed for me that the parents and one other child were still missing. She never said dead only missing and marveled at her grandchildren’s happiness. At seventy years of age I was most impressed with her own energy at carrying-on. It cannot be easy to look after two young children at that age and though they were having fun now there must be times when the loss hits them and her heart must break because she knows that despite feeding, clothing and doing all she can for them she is and can never be their mother. That pain was easy to see in her eyes. Grandmothers do a lot of child rearing in Japan usually and Japanese women live long so there is hope that she will be able to send these amazing kids out into the world at adulthood but the uncertainty must weigh heavily upon her and I really felt for her at this stage in her life to have so much responsibility again.
Amazing people that I hope to see again.
More later
Damon
Rock and a Hard Place
The man above is Jayson Carpenter. He’s a San Francisco based photographer and was also a Peace Boat volunteer in Ishinomaki over the Golden Week. Amazingly he didn’t even have a confirmed place on the mission north when he arrived in Japan and had to play rock, scissors, paper to get one of the last remaining places. Ironic somewhat that Peace Boat desperately needs volunteers now.
Read Jayson’s blog about his Peace Boat experience here.
Later
Damon
Actually Do Stuff For Japan
Don’t pray for the place, If there was a god he wouldn’t have sent this fuck-off big wave to destroy tens of thousands of lives in the first place. Get real.
As Dave Gutteridge , a comedian from Canada, has written on his hard hat above, help Japan in ways that are concrete and make a dent in the slow, slow path back to recovery the Tohoku coast is beginning to take as we speak. People can’t eat scriptures.
Dave is a man of his word for sure, I talked and photographed him and his Hockey team members as they were shovelling mud; moving debris and generally making a small but significant difference to the town of Ishinomaki while volunteering with the Peace Boat.
Inspired by the 350 or so people I met on the Golden week mission up there, great people actually doing stuff for Japan.
More images of Peace Boat volunteers in ishinomaki here.
More later
Damon
Cleaning-Up In Ishinomaki
Just some quick pictures of the Japanese Self-Defense Force and Peace Boat volunteers cleaning-up in Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture yesterday.
More to follow.
Lots to do as have some biggish stories from here but back in Tokyo, time gets eaten-up quickly.
Most importantly today: my eldest son’s football match.
More images of the Japanese Self Defence Force (JSDF) working in the tsunami hit area of Tohoku
also
Images of Peace Boat volunteers working in Ishinomaki at my photoshelter archive here..
Later
Damon
Recovery
The funny thing about this earthquake and tsunami is that it is turning out to be both the best and the worst of times for me. The worst needs no explaining; I really wish it had never happened. The best part does need some context however.
Being in Iwate certainly was not good, it was a hard and deeply upsetting experience and I bent the ears of good friends on my first night there just to throw-off the feelings of voyeurism I had. Being a photographer does allow me to go to places and meet people that would not be possible without a camera to invite me there and though it is not always comfortable; and even it is not always right to be there, I want to do it because I believe it can be a positive thing if I done properly. I am very proud to have met the amazing people of Iwate and it has forever changed my perceptions and opinions on the Japanese. That is what I hope to show with my images: I hope that a picture I take in a businesslike way says something more than business about the subject in it.
But I am a photographer and as such, though the subject of the tsunami is not one to take pride or profit in easily, this event has proved surprisingly good on both for me this month. The images above is the front cover of Eurobiz magazine, a fact of which I am happy, and not a little proud yet even though this image and the others images of the tsunami they used in the magazine, along with the fantastic work by Rob Gilhooly, do tell people something of the situation up there, the feelings I have from my time in the north are stronger still. It is shockingly bad there, unbelievable in a way that few photographers can ever interpret with anything resembling poignancy as my good friend Gianni Giosue has done here.
The image above for example was taken during a paying job; a parachute job, and though I like it and think it is a good enough shot it does not have the right emotions for me that this tragic event deserves; the emotions which are all to easy to lose when photographing for work.
So I really want to go back to give myself a chance to look with a more gentle eye on the stories there and tell you about them. I wonder if that is right thing to do however.
Later
Damon
Other Victims
The pictures above are of the Fukushima Aquarium when I visited a few years ago. Happy memories indeed, an amazing place that is all an aquarium should be: stunning and natural, educational and fun. I am more than a little sad to hear it has been badly damaged in the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th.
Apparently many of the larger animals, like sea lions and seals were able to be saved, some having been moved to other zoos and aquariums in other regions of Japan but many of the others animals and fish died. The Aquarium also sits close to the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power station that is still leaking radioactivity. This will, of course, only add to it woes.
It may seem churlish to worry about animals when so many people have lost their lives and livelihoods in the events of the last few weeks. Yet somehow the deaths of such animals seem even more pointedly sad because they did not ask to be there, they were captured, they performed, they were trapped and when the tsunami hit they could not get away without the help of the people who had put them in such a position in the first place. It is even more ironic in an aquarium than in a zoo that if such animals had been in their natural environment they would have been pretty safe, yet in the protective glass walls of such places the sea could easily and uncaringly kill them.
I love aquariums and zoo as I’ve said before, I love animals and the chance to see them up close is always exciting and such places make that possible. I can’t swim and I would never be able to experience the beauty of a shark or manta-ray swimming or a cloud of silvery fish turning as one and shimmering like a dream were it not for such places. I like only the good zoos though, I do not want to have the animal displayed, I want to look for it and see it doing something natural (even if that is hiding); I do not like it to perform and think that the sea lion shows and whale and dolphin enclosures are cruel and anachronistic in our supposedly more enlighten age.
Fukushima Aquarium had those yes, yet it also had huge tanks of dizzying dimensions where fish could swim almost free. I also loved that it was close to the sea. The outside image above was of the aquarium’s garden that faced the ocean giving you the chance to gaze out at the surface of the world you had just looked at from beneath while inside. It was an inspired idea, connecting the unreality of the visit to that other, wetter realm the aquarium could provide with the reality of the ocean and it true immensity and mystery. Unfortunately when the tsunami hit it was that proximity that destroyed it.
I’m not sure if that is some kind of poetic justice for such places. It could be seen as such all too easily but then again Fukushima Aquarium was one of the good zoos: it cared, it showed us why we should respect the sea and it tried to educate us about it. Perhaps many visitors on their way to the dolphin shows and performing seals forgot that part of the experience in the heady, irreverent pleasures of these risible acts. March 11th was the day the ocean took it dignity back from such things yet it still upsets me that so many animals that didn’t want to be there had to die in the process.
List of zoos and aquariums damaged and affected by the earthquake and tsunami with details of how people can help with Jaza here.
Later
Damon
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