By Yuriko Nakao

The 3.11 Portrait Project brings smiles to the victims of the triple-whammy disaster through the power of the photograph

After the magnitude 9.0 earthquake rocked Japan in March 11 last year, as a photographer for a newswire service, I had many chances to document reality, which was often depressing and shocking. However, at times, I would feel rewarded when my work brought positive results by inviting support and compassion from around the world to those who were suffering. However, still, the support was often not directed specifically to the person pictured in my shots, which often made me feel helpless.

Japanese photographer Nobuyuki Kobayashi, 42, had experienced a similar feeling. His main field of photography was mostly to shoot commercial photos but past assignments included regions in conflict, and disasters such as the earthquake which hit off the coast of Sumatra, the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the attacks on 9/11. As what many Japanese photographers did after Japan experienced the worst catastrophe since World War Two, Kobayashi went up north to take photographs after his friend in Iwate prefecture asked him to. He shot pictures of the disaster and rubble in northeastern Japan, but came to question whether that was the role he should play.

His conclusion was no.

“People were striving to move forward despite their difficulty and I hoped by photographing their portrait, it would offer them courage and hope, and possibly give them momentum to take a positive step forward towards the future,” Kobayashi said.

By Yuriko Nakao

Seaweed grower Takaaki Watanabe took to the sea in his boat before the massive tsunami roared into the northeastern Japanese town of Minamisanriku, becoming one of a lucky few to save the vessel essential for their livelihood.

But back on shore the raging waters of March 11 swept away his wife, his mother and his house, built on land in his family for 13 generations, though his three teenaged daughters managed to survive.

“At that time, I wasn’t sure whether I could actually resume the cultivation (farming seaweed, scallops and oysters). I had no way of knowing my future,” he said recently.

Now, nearly a year later, the 48-year-old Watanabe has lost 5 kg and four teeth, but is starting to see tentative signs of rebirth as the result of his hard work since the massive wave touched off by the 9.0 magnitude offshore earthquake destroyed a vast swathe of his town, one of the hardest hit.

Much of this is due to the new – and still unusual – measures he and other fishermen have taken to preserve their livelihood: banding together to work in small groups rather than alone or in family units, as was always traditional.

By Yuriko Nakao

One photo of a young woman, wrapped in a beige blanket and standing in front of a pile of debris, became one of the iconic images right after Japan’s massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake, which triggered huge tsunamis that devastated a wide swathe of northern Japan.

Reuters, along with other major agencies, picked up the photograph run by Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, shot by Tadashi Okubo, a photographer with the paper. The image was published extensively around the world, and many people came to know her as the woman wrapped in a blanket.

(Yomiuri Shimbun)

Her name is Yuko Sugimoto. She is 29 and the mother of a five-year-old boy and was born and raised in Ishinomaki, where the photograph was taken. Around 3,800 people perished in Ishinomaki alone, the highest death toll for any individual city.

When the photograph was taken at 7:00 a.m. on March 13, she was staring in the direction of her son Raito’s kindergarten, which was surrounded by piles of rubble and still partly submerged by seawater. She had been searching for him since the quake hit two days before, but in vain.

By Yuriko Nakao

For the first blog on the “invisible snow” of Fukushima, click here.

As Japan approached the one year anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, I revisited Buddhist zen monk Koyu Abe, chief priest of Joenji temple in Fukushima. I covered him six months ago when he was planting and distributing sunflower seedlings in an effort to lighten the impact of the radiation following the nuclear disaster triggered by the earthquake, the worst since Chernobyl in 1986.

Ever since my coverage of Abe and his family, I had kept in touch with them, checking in once in a while to see how they were doing. Despite their hardships and their stoic way of devoting themselves to the community, they were light hearted. One night, Abe called my cell phone in excitement because they had seen me on television when I was covering the world gymnastics championship.

Thanks to this sort of relationship, I was able to be a part of his daily life while covering his latest efforts to counter the radiation amid his normal duties as a monk and as the father of three boys.

When I arrived at the temple in the first week of February, it had a different look. Last time, the grounds were filled with flower seedlings and sunflowers bloomed as cicadas buzzed. But this time, the temple was quiet and colorless under a blanket of snow — with radiation storage tanks piled next to the entrance.

Invisible Snow from Reuters Tokyo Pictures on Vimeo.

When the Fukushima nuclear power plant exploded, I was in Fukushima covering people who had evacuated from their houses near the plant, as they underwent radiation checks as authorities isolated those who had showed signs of exposure.

The disaster control center in the prefectural government hall in Fukushima city, situated about 63 km (39 miles) north-west of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, was chaotic. However, once I stepped out the building, everything around me looked the same in the city and it was difficult to comprehend what was actually happening. People in the city were walking their dogs outside and riding their bicycles on the streets, although lights were out and many places were experiencing cuts in water supplies.

Soon after, I received an evacuation order from my bosses and since then, my coverage was carried out from outside of Fukushima city and I didn’t have a chance to go back there until recently. Even five months after the disaster, it seemed like fresh and shocking news of radiation had been floating up incessantly. Not just reading or hearing about the situation but imagining the amount of pain and stress the people in Fukushima were going through had made me feel depressed.

When I found about a Buddhist zen monk Koyu Abe, who aimed to revive Fukushima by planting sunflowers, amaranthus, field mustard and cockscomb, which are believed to absorb cesium, it occurred to me that I should go and cover his story. Before I even realized, I picked up the phone and shortly afterward I was on a bullet train heading for Fukushima.

Since covering the Fukushima nuclear crisis in March, I have photographed various radiation scenes in the months that followed.

Starting with shocking scenes of people who were actually contaminated with radiation being cleansed and scenes of people being isolated into a building.

I covered many people who had possibly been exposed after their evacuation from areas near the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Imagining what it would be like to be in their shoes it was difficult to ask for permission but surprisingly, almost all the people allowed me to take pictures as a Geiger counter ticked beside them.

However, being friendly to the media didn’t mean that they were not worried.

When I was first told that I would be covering the Australian Open tennis tournament, I was very excited as it is a major global sporting event and I would get to fly out from Japan where it was cold, to a hot and sunny down under.

At the same time, frankly speaking, I had a feeling of fear and worry, since I had heard scary tales about shooting the event from a photographer who had covered it multiple times. Dreadful stories of heat, the scorching sun, cameras getting too hot to function and sometimes so hot that I wouldn’t even be able to touch it. I was told that one photographer’s computer had broken because of the extreme heat, and that sometimes the photographers’ chairs at the courtside got so hot that it was unbearable.

Another worrisome issue was the physical intensity of the coverage, especially the first few days, as I was told I’d be busy as there are nearly 130 preliminary matches in total. It would be so demanding with no time to rest and eat. When I heard about this, I wasn’t sure whether I could survive what sounded like a major ordeal. So the advice was to never wear short sleeves but instead, wear a white long-sleeved shirt, a hat, put on sun block, drink water constantly, cover up the gear with towels to block the heat and don’t over pace. Everything is a build up to the Men’s final, the finale of the two-week-long tournament.

After arriving in Melbourne’s Rod Laver arena I met my team which consisted of an editor, a processor and six photographers, including myself. Working as part of a team was an extremely valuable chance to learn from them and get feedback and tips from the more experienced tennis shooters. At the beginning, I tended to think the key picture was the classic shot of the player with the tennis ball smacked right on the racket. Soon, I learned that tennis pictures are not just about the player in action, but the reaction and the moments between the action, capturing the beauty of the body motion, the scenery in which the match was fought out in, the reactions of the coach, team members and the fans. Every one of these pictures is as important as each other, creating depth to the story.