Should rural towns in Japan be rebuilt?

RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan  Framed by 70,000 pine trees, the mile-long strip of sandy beach was a jewel along the rocky coastline of northeastern Japan. The forest of black and red pines was planted more than three centuries ago and helped blunt the racing Pacific Ocean winds.

Today, one tree stands. The rest of the pines lie on the ground or washed out to sea, victims of the tsunami that crashed into the coast March 11 following an earthquake and wiped out dozens of communities like this one.

"It is a symbol for us gaman zuyoi," the "tough people" living in this part of Japan, says housewife Yoko Kumagai, 59, whose family is among thousands in this fishing town whose homes were demolished.

"We are tough under adversity, strong and able to persevere. That's famous throughout Japan," she says in the junior high school gymnasium that is now home to her, her husband and two children, and 800 other townspeople.

The tsunami killed more than 2,000 residents of this town, a popular resort of 23,000 people.

Like many rural communities in the USA, Rikuzentakata and countless towns and villages along Japan's ravaged coastline were home to largely elderly populations, left behind by younger people who moved inland and to the south for better jobs than the fishing and agricultural work this area could offer.

Now, the question of how — or whether — to rebuild such rural communities hangs over reconstruction efforts.

Japan's government estimates that the cost of recovery, including restoration of damaged nuclear reactors, will exceed $300 billion. That would make it the costliest natural disaster ever.

"Even before the tsunami, young people were leaving for the big cities, as there are no colleges here and jobs were already hard to find" says Futoshi Toba, mayor of Rikuzentakata, where the tsunami destroyed 40% of the city's homes.

In a population of 23,000, 35% are older than 65, says Toba, whose administration has seized on the "pine tree of hope" to try to inspire the recovery.

Working long days from a makeshift city hall, the mayor has little time for his own tragedy. His wife, Kumi Toba, 38, whose birthday was Monday, disappeared the day of the tsunami.

"I just have to do my job; other public officials' families have suffered losses too," he says of 70 missing public employees out of a total of 290 workers.

He guesses his wife, mother to their children ages 10 and 12, was helping others evacuate in an example of the public spirit and community organization that is commonplace here.

"I can shed tears later," says Toba, 46. The National Police Agency says more than 11,300 people are known to have died in the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's northeast coast and damaged a nuclear plant, sending radiation into the environment.

Tens of thousands are still living in shelters. Another 16,290 are still listed as missing. Once the missing are classified as dead, the death toll from the disaster would exceed 25,000.

Thousands of U.S. Marines are involved in the search for bodies out to sea and along the shore.

Not equipped to recover

In the world's fastest-aging country, where nearly one-quarter of the 127 million residents are older than 65, the aging issue is magnified in the tsunami-hit coastal areas, says Jeff Kingston at Tokyo's Temple University.

"An aging society is not well-equipped physically, psychologically and financially to recover," he says. "The fact they are so aged casts a real cloud on the recovery of these communities."

The disaster-struck towns will require massive support from Tokyo, Kingston says.

However, Japan may not be in a position to do so. The country borrowed heavily over the past two decades to fund a stimulus spending plan aimed at overcoming a real estate crash in the early 1990s. The plan failed. Today, Japan's economy has slipped from No. 2 to No. 3 below China and the United States, and it has the highest level of national debt in the developed world.

"The government will want a say in how and where they rebuild. It will be a tough fight," he says. "But there's a silver lining, as it gets people to focus on how to improve health and social welfare for the elderly community."

Kingston says that officials at Japan's Ministry of Construction are proposing compact towns on higher ground, where the elderly will be easier to serve, rather than in their existing, tsunami-vulnerable communities spread along the coast.

Rikuzentakata mayor Toba puts the immediate task of building temporary housing before any longer-term plans. "If we say too quickly that we will merge with other towns, the people will be unhappy," says Toba.

Far from the bright lights of Tokyo, the worst-hit areas belong to a region, known as Tohoku, with a reputation as an agricultural backwater. But in a country that deeply reveres tradition and customs, Tohoku offers "more traditional culture than Tokyo, and more original Japanese lifestyle," says Yoko Nagamine, head of the Northern Tohoku Information Center in Morioka. "That one pine tree gives us a lesson, and shows the strength, life and soul of this area," she says.

Few Japanese professions, and lifestyles, are more traditional than the geisha, female entertainers skilled in song, music and dance.

"I will be the last geisha here," says Tsuyako Ito, in the former steel city of Kamaishi. Ito, 85, whose stage name is Chikano Fujima, lost her precious collection of kimonos and instruments along with her house on March 11 — as well as her only student, who died in the tsunami.

"I won't find another apprentice. It takes a long time to learn the skills, but young people don't want to learn. No matter how good you are, you can't make a living, so now no one else wants to be a geisha," she says.

A survivor of three previous tsunamis and the U.S. bombings in World War II, Ito says, "This tsunami was much more scary." Recovering from pneumonia in Kamaishi Hospital, Ito vows to remain in her hometown, where she performs in traditional restaurants.

Supplying Japan's keen appetite for seafood, fishing is the mainstay of most coastal towns here. In Ofunato, home to 41,000 people, including 33 centenarians, Mayor Kimiaki Toda says the biggest challenge is rebuilding the fishing industry, which employs 10% of the town. Down at the harbor, seagulls scavenge the fish products strewn around wrecked cold storage and processing facilities.

Leaking radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear reactor farther to the south could imperil the industry.

Japan's Fisheries Agency says test results show no fish were contaminated. But some foreign buyers of Japanese seafood have canceled orders, say news media reports.

Japan produced 5.43 million tons of seafood in 2009 and exported more than 200,000 tons of mackerel and tuna, according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

'Most people won't stay here'

"It was difficult to hire young people before the tsunami, as fishing is hard and risky work, with low wages compared to other industries," says Toda, 61.

In office since December, the former construction executive now faces his biggest building and management project. By improving local firms' productivity, Toda hopes to raise salaries and tempt younger workers to return. To make up the labor shortfall, some firms had hired Chinese workers in recent years, Toda says, despite Japan's tight immigration controls.

Hotel owner Yaoko Tadano, 78, is proud of her town's blue-collar heritage, and vows to rebuild her ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn that typically features tatami-matted rooms and communal baths. She needs the government to loan her the $10 million cost.

Of her three grandchildren, Tadano expects only one to remain in Ofunato — a grandson, 22, who on Friday was enrolled by formal ceremony into a local land surveying company. "He's an unusual case, as most people won't stay here," she admits.

Farther north, in Miyako, fishing company boss Nomari Masahiko, 55, admits he was tempted to quit after the tsunami wrecked his quayside warehouse. "But I have a lot of workers, and became successful thanks to them. I must think about their lives and job security," Masahiko says.

"There are very few young Japanese who want to work in the fishing industry," he says.

Washing dishes with his grandmother, outside a Miyako elementary school-turned-emergency-shelter, Yosuke Shimazaki, 26, has no plans to go fishing.

"Most young people leave town to get jobs," says Shimazaki, who is unemployed. "I'd go, too, if I got the chance."

Fisherman Takashi Suzuki was clearing up his tsunami-damaged but still standing home in Miyako. He worries the disaster will accelerate the migration of young people to inland, urban areas.

"It will take over 10 years, but our city will recover," says Suzuki, 73.

In the town of Yamada, where tourists have long been attracted to its sparkling bays and $24 all-you-can-eat oyster barbecues, Shioko Sasaki is trying to get back to normal. At Yamada's blackened shell of a train station — hit by the tsunami and then fire — Sasaki, 42, and daughter Seren, 16, look at notices about replacement school buses.

"The town cannot recover," says Shioko Sasaki, whose house survived so she is likely to remain.

"The tsunami did too much damage, and another one could come, so people are scared," says Sasaki, who worked as an assistant in a now-wrecked drugstore. Says her daughter: "When I graduate, I want to find a job somewhere else, somewhere inland."

At a gymnasium beside Yamada city hall, which sits on a rise overlooking a sea of devastation, Kumiko Ito, 52, picks through mud-covered photographs and albums salvaged by rescue workers from destroyed homes. She's lucky, finding a picture of her son on his graduation from a police training college in Tokyo, where he works.

"This is the only picture I now have. It's made me happier than I have been since the tsunami," she says. Ito and her husband want to rebuild their house and life, but she doubts the town's younger generation will stay, including their other child, a daughter, 18.

Ofunato mayor Toda is confident his community will survive.

"We fell into the bottom of a steep valley," he says. "But from now on, with our best efforts, our future is bright."