Ordinary people in devastating times
Kazutomo Tashiro's book and photo exhibition capture the resilience of Tohoku's survivors, writes David McNeill
Like millions of Japanese, Kazutomo Tashiro was left wrung out by the disaster of March 11, 2011. The huge earthquake and tsunami killed 19,000 people, displaced 340,000 and left swathes of the country's northeast coastline in tatters.
It also triggered a sort of collective psychic shock among twenty- and thirty-something Japanese, already reeling from the demise of the miracle economy and two decades of painful stagnation.
I wanted to get viewers to not just feel sorry for my subjects, but also to think about the history of this place and how the people there get on with their lives
"A lot of us were questioning our usefulness," Tashiro says at a photo gallery in central Tokyo. Watching the nightly trauma played out by the bereaved and the displaced on television was emotionally exhausting, but put things in perspective.
A native of Kyushu, on the other side of Japan, Tashiro made his way northeast as part of an enormous wave of people, more than one million strong, that would arrive in the three most distressed prefectures of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima. Most volunteers came with offers of help. Tashiro, who is 33, had a different purpose: he wandered from town to town to photograph local people amid the wreckage of their lives.
Oddly, perhaps, the impact of viewing images of people torn from their old roots in a few shocking, watery minutes is uplifting. Many of the 400 or so subjects, spontaneously photographed as they labour in fields ruined by seawater or endure cramped temporary wooden housing in freezing winters, look steeled and resilient. Some are even smiling. Brought to their knees when the earth shifted on its axis three years ago, most have refused to stay down.
