Photo/Illutration Mourners offer prayers toward the sea in the Arahama district of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, from early morning on March 11, 2024, to remember victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. (Jin Nishioka)

Newspaper reporters interview people on the scene to write their stories. They are passionate about accurately presenting their interview subjects’ all-too-human emotions and reactions, ranging from grief and anguish to courage and laughter.

Today, I am thinking anew about what it means for a newspaper reporter to be on the scene.

Masakazu Higashino, 60, an Asahi Shimbun reporter, met three teenage siblings—two girls and one boy—for the first time in May 2011.

That was two months after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The girls were in high school and the boy was in junior high school. Having lost their parents to the tsunami in Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, they were living with their grandmother.

Higashino asked the youngsters, “How did you get over (the tragedy)?” The younger of the two girls replied, “We haven’t got over it yet.” And the boy just kept looking down with tears in his eyes.

“That question was just horrible and inexcusable,” Higashino recalled in his book “Chuzai Kisha Hatsu Otsuchi-cho Shinsai kara no 365-nichi” (literally, “From the resident correspondent in the town of Otsuchi; 365 days from the earthquake”).

But despite that fiasco, he must have somehow won the trust of the kids. At the request of their grandmother, Higashino became their private tutor.

The boy wanted him to watch a TV horror show together. The older girl was starting to rebel against her grandmother, and when she went too far and  Higashino could not help snapping at her, she looked miserable.

Higashino’s story appeared in the newspaper about a year after the quake and tsunami. In it, the older girl was quoted as saying bravely, “The important thing is to make my own decisions and not blame the tsunami later.”

She was addressing fellow victims of her generation. There were times when she couldn’t cry like she should have. Her take from such experiences was, “If you can’t cry, then laugh.”

The Great East Japan Earthquake was 14 years ago. When I visited the Sanriku region recently, Higashino was at the scene of the Ofunato wildfires.

Clad in an old, wrinkled black jacket and looking crabby, Higashino is living in the region. 

What is post-disaster reconstruction? The reporter who keeps asking that question is still there.

—The Asahi Shimbun, March 11

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.