RIKUZENTAKATA, Japan — Migaku-san, I’ve left your dirty gloves and your holey shoes by the door. I’m worried you’ll kick up a fuss when you return and ask where I put your shoes, so I’ve left them by the door without polishing them.
– Letter from Sachiko Kumagai to her husband after he was lost in the tsunami.
When the tide finally receded, the world had changed. Trucks and houses had been swept aside like children’s toys, leaving the living to comb through a wasteland of mud and debris for their dead. Ten years on, the living are still searching, their grief never subsiding.
A father lives alone in a house at the end of a long driveway lined with cherry trees. He surround…
Keep on reading: Ten years on, grief never subsides for some survivors of Japan’s tsunami