Preventing Disaster-Related Deaths: Takahashi Tomohiro / Journalist, Photographer

"Direct Talk"

Our guest today is Takahashi Tomohiro,

a journalist and photographer.

Takahashi is a survivor of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

Ever since, he's been photographing the aftermath of natural disasters

and sharing his images with the public.

His purpose is not merely to document the devastation,

but to capture scenes that leave people

with a lasting memory of disasters.

He travels across Japan,

sharing his photographs and spreading a message of disaster prevention

to those who haven't directly experienced a major disaster.

We asked Takahashi about surviving the 2011 earthquake and tsunami

and how the experience set him on his current path.

When it comes to disaster preparedness,

the bottom line is to stay alive. Survive.

And how do you survive?

By doing whatever it takes.

The "how" doesn't matter, as long as you survive.

You have to realize that, at the end of the day,

you have to be responsible for protecting your own life.

March 11th, 2011.

A massive earthquake struck the Tohoku region, in northeastern Japan,

triggering a powerful tsunami that devastated areas along the Pacific coast,

causing more than 19,000 deaths.

The city of Iwaki, in Fukushima Prefecture.

At the time, Takahashi was working as a staff photographer

for a local publishing company.

The quake left his home partially collapsed.

In the aftermath, Takahashi noticed that

media coverage focused on the most heavily hit areas.

So he decided to document the damage around his hometown of Iwaki,

and publish the photos on his blog.

This is how he got started photographing affected areas.

I get the sense that they look at things based on how severe the damage is.

But when it comes to the human toll, even one death is noteworthy.

I realized that if I left it to the major media outlets,

the damage to Iwaki would forever go unnoticed.

I figured, if the media wasn't going to tell our story,

I could use the internet to tell it myself.

That's why I started taking photos.

It's as simple as that.

Takahashi currently works as a journalist specializing in disaster prevention.

He gives talks to various groups, businesses, and schools across Japan.

In February 2022, he gave a talk in Tokyo.

Although more than ten years have passed since the Tohoku earthquake,

his message continues to resonate.

The 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes.

The 2018 floods in southwestern Japan.

He talks from the heart about the photos he's taken of areas across Japan

ravaged by natural disasters.

This is a photo of the tsunami sweeping into Iwaki

after the Tohoku earthquake.

Takahashi was at the harbor trying to document the damage.

He was swept away after taking this photo.

In the Tohoku region, we get tsunamis now and then.

I've experienced many tsunami warnings in my life,

and even if one does reach the shore,

it's maybe 30 centimeters tall at the most.

I underestimated the power of nature.

I made up a scenario in my mind about how I assumed nature was going to act.

And I think past life experiences

can get in the way of your judgment in moments like that.

It was just past 3:30.

I heard someone yell, "Run!"

When I'm taking photos, I get tunnel vision.

I'm only looking through my camera's viewfinder.

I finally looked out toward the sea but couldn't spot the embankment.

When I saw a blackish wall coming toward me at a frightening speed,

I realized it was the tsunami.

First, the water came up to my knees,

which immediately knocked me off my feet, and onto my backside.

I couldn't stand up.

I found myself being swept away.

And a few moments later, the main wave hit,

and I was completely swallowed up.

I think I was carried underwater for 10, maybe 20 seconds.

I don't think I would have been able to hold my breath any longer.

I kept telling myself, "Don't inhale."

That was the only thing going through my mind.

So I kept my mouth shut and waited.

Then suddenly I realized I'd stopped.

My feet were touching the ground, and just my head was above water.

I looked up and saw that I was at the government building housing the coast guard.

Two members of the coast guard pulled me up out of the water.

They saved me.

To this day, I vividly remember their hands,

the feeling of them pulling me out.

Takahashi had miraculously survived the tsunami.

In the aftermath,

he thought long and hard about why he'd been spared.

Many people died in the tsunami -

the same tsunami that'd swallowed me.

From a rooftop, I saw people being swept away in their cars.

Yet somehow I'd survived.

Ever since, I've been thinking about where I'm meant to die.

Ever since 3/11.

And I have the vague sense that I still have a role to play,

and I get to live until I fulfill it.

That's the feeling I get.

Takahashi is an Iwaki native.

After graduating from a junior college,

he began shooting pictures as a photographer for a local publishing company.

But after his harrowing experience,

he found himself unable to fully get behind his employer's editorial policy.

When you belong to an organization,

you can't tell stories in the way you want to,

because you have to toe the line - you're constrained.

But our city had been devastated.

I figured I had to tell the stories I wanted to tell,

otherwise what was the point?

So that made me decide to take a leap of faith.

After quitting his job at the publishing company,

he began photographing the damage to his home city,

as if searching for the reason he'd been spared.

Through that work, he'd have an experience even more profound than the tsunami.

I spent most of my time covering this area called

Usuiso, in Iwaki.

It's a place Iwaki residents go to for leisure.

Parents take their young children there to go swimming in the ocean.

When I went there after the disaster,

it looked like the place had been drained of color.

The whole town was sepia-colored.

The entire landscape was completely different from the Usuiso I knew,

that I'd grown up with.

And I just couldn't come to terms with that.

I saw the body of an old woman who'd died

with a small child in her arms.

I saw scenes like that.

I had to come to grips with it all.

I started to think, "Why am I coming out here every day,

shooting scenes like this?"

Day after day, I wondered.

I started to hate getting up in the morning.

But slowly, Takahashi's gaze shifted from scenes of destruction

to those who had survived the disaster.

He shared with us a photo he took of a man he met

at an evacuation shelter.

The man, who'd lost his ten-year-old daughter,

puts his hands together in front of the plot of land

where his house used to stand.

Every day, Suzuki-san would go to the place where his house used to be

and put his hands together.

Every day.

But he'd tell me that he wasn't praying for his daughter, Himeka.

I asked him one time what he was doing,

and he told me he was apologizing.

He was telling his daughter he was sorry.

Whatever the reason, he was unable to save his child.

He explained to me just that one time that he was telling Himeka

that he was sorry he couldn't protect her.

Meeting Suzuki-san is really what got me to start thinking

about what I could do to help save people's lives.

I realized that spreading the message of disaster prevention

could be a way to help others.

And really, meeting Suzuki-san was truly pivotal for me.

I believe it changed my life.

Takahashi says he's driven to spread his message.

I give these talks with the goal of achieving one thing.

Though our time together is brief,

I give talks in person or on TV,

hoping that every person I reach will survive

if a disaster comes their way.

I don't want anyone to die.

I truly wish for this from the bottom of my heart.

What can you do to survive, so that you don't die?

That's what disaster prevention boils down to.

That's what my experience has taught me,

and also what I hear from others.

That's the message I want to get across.

In the 11 years he's been doing this work,

the disaster areas in northeastern Japan have transformed.

Every year, around the anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake,

Takahashi returns to the Usuiso area of Iwaki

to capture the changing landscape.

Each year, he finds more of the land has been filled and elevated.

Traces of the disaster are becoming slowly harder to find.

(For sale)

There will come a day when everyone who experienced the Tohoku earthquake firsthand

will have passed on.

At that point, this land that's been elevated,

or these massive, castle-like sea walls that've been built...

I just hope they don't convey the wrong message,

that these places that've been built post-disaster according to new standards

are somehow safe from tsunamis,

that in the event of a tsunami you don't have to run anymore.

If that becomes the message, I fear the disaster will repeat itself.

Beneath the elevated land rests the old Usuiso

that was devastated all those years ago.

So my hope is that we continue to pass on the knowledge

that this new town that is supposedly safe

was built on top of the old Usuiso.

Hopefully, I can convey that through my photos, too.

(Do you have any words to live by?)

"Consider yourself a guest in this world and you won't mind hardship."

- Date Masamune.

More often than not, life doesn't go your way.

Most of what we experience is hardship and suffering.

But if you think of yourself as having been invited into this world as a guest,

it becomes easier to bear life's difficulties.

Of course, I have yet to reach that level of awareness,

so I often get frustrated.

But I've lived my life with this as my motto.