shashasha

On march 11, 2011,14:46 local time, a magnitude 9 earthquake centered off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture struck eastern Japan. Three years later, the National Police Agency of Japan’s statistics of March 2014 show the earthquake and ensuing tsunami left 15,884 dead and 2,633 missing. Ishinomaki, a coastal city in Miyagi, was especially devastated. The city’s official count as of July 2014 reveal that in addition to the 3,271 deaths directly caused by the earthquake and tsunami, 253 people have died from physical and psychological fatigue since the disaster, with 436 still missing.

Since 2011, photographer Shoko Hashimoto, a native of Ishinomaki and currently based in Saitama of the Great Tokyo Area, has made 36 trips to his hometown, spending almost a year’s time photographing his furusato - his “old hometown.“ It is said that this devastating Great East Japan Earthquake was of a magnitude experienced once in a millennium. How then do people make sense of such a catastrophe? What did it leave behind? This photo book ponders the effects it hashed in people’s daily routines, on their lives, their values, their hearts.