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1. 2/13/12 11:01 PMAmid Japan Reconstruction, Generational Rift Opens - NYTimes.com
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The New York Times
A tsunami destroyed all 15 of the
fishing villages that make up part of
Onagawa.
ONAGAWA JOURNAL
As Japan Works to Patch Itself Up, a Rift
Between Generations Opens
Kazuhiro Yokozeki for The New York Times
Hiroaki Suzuki, 21, opposes rebuilding a small village, saying he wants to live in a centralized
community away from the sea.
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: February 12, 2012
ONAGAWA, Japan — At age 39, Yoshiaki Suda,
the new mayor of this town that was destroyed by
last March’s tsunami, oversees a community
where the votes, money and influence lie among
its large population of graying residents. But for
Onagawa to have a future, he must rebuild it in
such a way as to make it attractive to those of his
generation and younger.
“That’s the most difficult problem,” Mr.
Suda said. “For whom are we
rebuilding?”
The reconstruction of Onagawa and the
rest of the coast where the tsunami hit
is a preview of what may be the most
critical test Japan will face in the
decades ahead. In a country where
power rests disproportionately among
older people, how does Japan, which
has the world’s most rapidly aging
population, use its dwindling resources
to build a society that looks to the
future as much as to the past?
The clashing generational interests are
perhaps most striking here in
Onagawa, a town of 8,500 residents
whose average age of 49.5 is above the
national average of 45. The evolving
debate over the shape of Onagawa’s
reconstruction underscores how older
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2. 2/13/12 11:01 PMAmid Japan Reconstruction, Generational Rift Opens - NYTimes.com
Page 2 of 5http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/world/asia/amid-japan-reconstruction-generational-rift-opens.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all
Japanese, more attached to their land
and customs, are wielding disproportionate influence and swaying
local governments into issuing reconstruction blueprints at odds with
Tokyo’s stated goal of creating long-term sustainable communities.
The debate here centers on the future of Onagawa’s rapidly aging and
depopulated fishing villages, which, reachable only by twisting
mountain roads, dot peninsulas that spread east and south of the town
center here. Three other villages, located on two nearby islands,
depend on a ferry that runs only three days a week for access to the
mainland.
So after the tsunami destroyed all 15 of the fishing villages that make
up part of Onagawa, Nobutaka Azumi, then the mayor, proposed a
reconstruction plan that seemed sensible enough: consolidate the
villages. Having just a few centralized communities would save the
town money, Mr. Azumi said, and perhaps increase their chances of
long-term survival.
But the village elders fought back, saying they wanted the government
to rebuild their ancestral villages so that they could spend their last
years there. Younger residents, many of whom supported
consolidation but were vastly outnumbered, were left grumbling
among themselves.
After the mayor persisted, he was pushed out of office by Mr. Suda,
who was backed by opponents of consolidation. Mr. Suda now says
that all the villages will be rebuilt, including a hamlet with just 22
inhabitants and an island village whose residents are on average 74
years old.
“There were 15 locations, so there will be 15 locations,” Mr. Suda said.
“We’re moving forward under the premise that there will be no
centralization, though I’m thinking of asking them one last time if this
is really O.K., whether their young relatives are in agreement.”
In Tokyo, reconstruction officials say they are aware that the voices of
young people are not being heard on the ground.
“It’s an extremely difficult problem,” said Yoshio Ando, an official at
Reconstruction Headquarters.
But the governing Democratic Party — as sensitive to the power of
aging rural voters as its predecessor, the Liberal Democratic Party —
contributed to the problem. National ministries are overseeing most of
the tsunami-hit area’s large reconstruction projects out of a recently
approved $120 billion budget.
But Tokyo is handing $25 billion directly to regional and local
governments to refashion their communities, a boon to politically
connected construction companies. The thinking is that local officials
understand their communities best, but local politicians and
bureaucrats are also less likely to make tough decisions like sacrificing
some villages to make others stronger — and to lower the
reconstruction costs that are likely to sap already strained financial
resources.
Mr. Ando said that Tokyo was counting on local governments to come
up with plans that were in keeping with the affected zone’s
demographic realities.
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3. 2/13/12 11:01 PMAmid Japan Reconstruction, Generational Rift Opens - NYTimes.com
Page 3 of 5http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/world/asia/amid-japan-reconstruction-generational-rift-opens.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all
“Local governments may be unable to persuade their residents, but the
national government is not considering going in and doing so
forcibly,” Mr. Ando said. “To put it negatively, we’re passing the buck.
To put it positively, it’s not for the national government to judge.”
After the disaster, even as debris from the tsunami was still being
cleared, Onagawa’s officials addressed head-on what other local
governments barely whispered: rebuilding communities that had been
dying before the tsunami made no sense.
“I understand that you want to remain in your villages, but what will
happen in 10 years?” Mr. Azumi, the former mayor, asked in May,
according to the minutes of a meeting.
In several meetings Mr. Azumi pleaded, unsuccessfully, with villagers
to consider moving to consolidated towns on higher ground.
All the district and fishing union leaders of the 15 villages — mostly
men around 60 years old — opposed consolidation. Though several
villages were within walking distance of one another, some leaders
said consolidation would create emotional stress and complicate the
management of fishing rights.
“Each village has its own way of doing things,” Kiichiro Abe, 59, the
leader of the fishing union in Oura, population 217, said in an
interview by the sea. “The people in this village want to live with their
own people, and so do the people in the next village.”
Hisashi Kimura, 57, the leader of Tsukahama, a village of 156 people,
had a different explanation for people’s reluctance to move: “They
want to die in the villages where they were born.”
But the younger people in the villages, who were in the minority and
who, as Confucian culture dictates, tend to defer to their elders, quietly
started telling town officials that they favored centralization, said
Toshiaki Yaginuma, the leader of the local government’s
reconstruction team. Larger towns, they said, would mean livelier
communities and more classmates for their children.
A resident of Oura, Katsuyuki Suzuki, 33, said he wanted to move to a
bigger community for his 3-year-old daughter. He did not see how
each village’s customs were so different that residents could not live
together, especially if it meant reconstruction would be faster and
cheaper.
“I mean, we wouldn’t be sleeping in the same place — we would have
our own houses,” Mr. Suzuki said.
Still, he had not yet shared his thoughts with his parents, who are
against centralization. “I try to avoid saying unnecessary things,” he
said.
Indeed, just as the young residents deferred to older ones at public
meetings, they did the same inside their homes, where three or four
generations typically live together.
The youngest fisherman in Oura, Hiroaki Suzuki, 21, who is not
related to Katsuyuki Suzuki, said that he wanted to live in a centralized
community away from the sea. Rebuilding in Oura, he believed, would
make it harder for him to find a wife, a widespread problem in fishing
villages.

4. 2/13/12 11:01 PMAmid Japan Reconstruction, Generational Rift Opens - NYTimes.com
Page 4 of 5http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/world/asia/amid-japan-reconstruction-generational-rift-opens.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=all
A version of this article appeared in print on February 13, 2012, on
page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: As Japan Works to
Patch Itself Up, A Rift Between Generations Opens.
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“If we build a home in a place where a tsunami could come again,
there’s no way that someone would come here to be my wife,” he said.
His parents believed that centralization would brighten their son’s
future. But they found it difficult to express their support at public
meetings or to their own parents.
Hiroaki’s father, Katsuhiro, said: “I want to tell our grandpas and
grandmas, This is hard to say, but after 10 years, I’m afraid that there
will be no one left in all the villages that will be rebuilt.”
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