能登半島を一周してAround the Noto Peninsula

I recently traveled around the Noto Peninsula in a counterclockwise direction. About five years ago, I once set out to capture the sunrise over the coastal scenery of Noto, but since then I had not returned until now. What I found this time was a completely different situation, for on January 1, 2024, the Noto Peninsula Earthquake struck.

As I looked at the transformed landscape of Noto, memories came back of visiting Sanriku after the catastrophic damage of the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. This experience once again prompted me to strongly question the meaning of “reconstruction” today.

To put it simply, Japan’s “reconstruction” is something decided and carried out arbitrarily by a handful of people, steered entirely by the political and economic interests of the time. Disaster victims themselves are excluded, with decisions made behind closed doors, ignoring their presence. What shocked me this time was that, although nearly two years have passed since the earthquake, the devastation looks as if the disaster had just struck. The Noto Peninsula is vast, and while Nanao City in the south has made some progress toward recovery, the northern areas remain devastated.

Driving through, I saw leaning utility poles and signs, houses left collapsed, countless shattered windows, roofs torn away, and entire communities reduced to ruins. In the northern mountains, landslides still affect whole areas, traffic remains restricted in many places, and many people continue to live in makeshift temporary housing.

Considering Japan’s frequent earthquakes and the current era, what struck me as I looked at Noto was that we are entering a time when we ourselves must decide and seek new ways to live, not merely new lifestyles but new means of survival. The same can be said of the state and local administrations, but Japan has already lost the socialistic strength it once had to help everyone. Painful decisions about who will be left behind must be made. Yet, shaped by decades of postwar socialistic policies, Japan has become a country where no one takes responsibility, and difficult decisions are endlessly postponed. Traveling around Noto, I felt strongly that daily reconstruction efforts lack clarity about “for whom” they are being carried out. Large-scale construction projects labeled “reconstruction” seem detached from the reality of people’s lives.

This sense is something I felt strongly when visiting Sanriku after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and now the Noto Peninsula exudes the same atmosphere. It feels like standing on the edge of despair. Yet one major difference between Sanriku and Noto is the “speed” of reconstruction. In 2011, during the Sanriku earthquake and subsequent recovery, Japan was undergoing successive shifts of power between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party, until the Second Abe Administration was formed. This political momentum, in the context of a shock doctrine, allowed reconstruction in Sanriku to move forward rapidly because it happened under the Abe Administration.

This in turn was proof of how closely Japanese politicians were tied to the general contractors (ゼネコン, major construction companies), acting for concrete-based profits and vested interests. At that time, Abe Shinzo, deeply entangled with these general contractors, became prime minister and maintained a long-term administration. As a result, post-disaster reconstruction after the Great East Japan Earthquake proceeded quickly and continuously. Yet what I felt from the start was the “discrepancy” in that speed. Even though politicians, bureaucrats, and general contractors all claimed to work under the banner of “reconstruction,” the victims themselves were absent. Their feelings were completely ignored. Without giving victims the time needed to grieve and heal, towns destroyed by earthquake and tsunami were rebuilt into new towns at breakneck speed, entirely for the profit of general contractors. The gap between that speed and the pace of human recovery tore at victims’ hearts. They found themselves bewildered by towns transformed before they could process their loss, and far from revitalizing communities, reconstruction left many places devoid of vitality.

This forces us to ask: what does “reconstruction” truly mean? In principle, reconstruction should not mean restoring streets and concrete to their former state, but reviving the lives and cultures of those affected. Yet in Japan, reconstruction has always been founded on the collusion between politicians and general contractors. This relationship is further reinforced by the mass media. Behind the façade of “reconstruction for victims,” a system exists whereby vast sums flow to general contractors. For politicians, this money returns in the form of electoral support; for bureaucrats, it guarantees post-retirement positions; and for the mass media, it secures sponsorships. In this collusion among politicians, general contractors, media, and bureaucrats, the victims are consistently absent. What this means is that there is no concern for restoring ways of life or culture. For general contractors, value lies only in the cycle of construction and demolition using concrete, while culture and life are dismissed as unprofitable, even “unscientific.”

This reveals how weak Japanese civil society truly is—or, more bluntly, that it never really existed. This tendency became glaringly clear in the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, occurring more than a decade after Abe’s administration. Why has reconstruction stagnated so severely in Noto, unlike Sanriku? One major factor is the collapse of the LDP’s Seiwa-kai faction after the assassination of Abe Shinzo. Japan is often described as a one-party state under the LDP, which is broadly accurate, but the true dynamics lie within its factions. During Abe’s rule, Seiwa-kai held immense power, driving reconstruction forward with political muscle. After his death, however, Seiwa-kai lost its dominance. Today, with Ishiba as prime minister, who has little connection to Seiwa-kai, the situation has shifted, but in practice nothing has changed: politics still fails to see the people.

The evidence is clear: nearly two years after the earthquake, construction vehicles and workers still dominate Noto’s roads and towns. The few hotels in the area are filled with construction personnel, leaving no rooms for residents, who remain unable to return home. Construction is ongoing everywhere, yet compared to Sanriku after the Great East Japan Earthquake, progress is strikingly slow. Why? The hidden reason lies in the Osaka Expo, which has drawn many visitors’ attention.

The Osaka Expo provides general contractors with an ideal profit model: short-term construction followed by dismantling. For this reason, both the national government and Osaka Prefecture have funneled resources into the Expo, even after the Noto Earthquake, instead of prioritizing local recovery. The priority has remained on the Expo. For politicians and bureaucrats, the Expo’s financial flows are lucrative. Yet the Expo is not even the ultimate goal—the real prize, as many in Osaka know, is the construction of casinos. Thus, even though the Noto Earthquake should have prompted, from a humanitarian perspective, a boycott of the Expo, no such move was made. Instead, tourists ignore Noto’s plight, and residents remain abandoned in unlivable conditions.

From this reality, it becomes clear that the truth of Japan’s reconstruction is “general contractor-first.” Behind the façade of helping victims, politicians and general contractors collude to maximize their profits. Victims are abandoned, while the word “reconstruction” drifts free of meaning, inflicting new psychological wounds, and cultural destruction follows because general contractors disregard culture itself.

From visiting both Sanriku and Noto, I felt that if disasters of similar scale strike other regions in the future, Japan may no longer have the strength to carry out reconstruction at all. In a sense, Noto’s recovery could be Japan’s “last reconstruction.” As society deteriorates further, when the next earthquake strikes, even the word “reconstruction” may no longer be used, because the capacity will be gone. This would mean the disappearance of hometowns.

Historically, Japanese people have repeatedly lost homes and relocated communities due to disasters. Yet that history is scarcely recognized today. Instead, under the name of “reconstruction,” what stands out is the cycle of destruction and rebuilding dictated by politics and general contractors, premised on permanent settlement. True reconstruction should be about people reclaiming their lives and preserving culture, not pouring concrete. Traveling through Noto, I found the same reality as in Sanriku: the word “reconstruction” wanders on alone, wounding people’s spirits further. In rural Noto, where large single-family homes were the norm, life in cramped, clustered temporary housing is intolerable. Yet given the systemic problems, it is also true that victims themselves must make decisions.

Japan is said to be changing prime ministers again, but in the end, regime change or replacing prime ministers changes nothing. The structure of reconstruction that abandons victims is Japan’s greatest problem. In Noto, I felt strongly that elderly people, unable to let go of the memory of the socialist era when everyone prospered together, cannot make decisions about the future. This leaves me with the sense that what is unfolding in Noto may herald not only its own demise but also the approaching end of Japan as a whole.