Twice a month, without interruption, Yasuo Takamatsu takes a small fishing boat from the port of Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, and travels several kilometers at sea.
For more than 13 years, Yasuo Takamatsu has stuck to the same routine; He wears a diving mask, an air cylinder, and a weight belt, preparing to descend into the depths of the sea.
When the boat gets far enough away, it jumps into the cold water below.
With each dive, he returns to the same sea from which he kidnapped his wife, Yoko.
tsunami
Yoko was swept off the roof of the bank building where she worked, when the 2011 tsunami struck the northeastern coast of Japan on the Pacific Ocean, destroying everything in its path. The massive waves penetrated a distance of approximately 10 kilometers into the land.
Her husband, Yasuo, had driven her to work that morning. During their short car ride, they talked about what they would have for dinner.
When the tsunami warning sirens sounded, Yoko and 12 of her colleagues climbed to the roof of the building. From there, she sent her husband a text message saying: "Are you okay? I want to go home."
When he saw the message, Yasuo thought his wife was safe. But the next day, when he went to the municipal hospital where the survivors were taking refuge, he did not find her there.
“I was told that the tsunami had swept it away,” he says. “After that, I could no longer stand. I lost all my strength, as if it had been swept away as well.”
Thousands of bodies were recovered along Japan's coast over the following days and weeks as the waters receded.
But many victims, like Yoko, remain missing.
For two years, Yasuo watched Japanese Coast Guard divers search for bodies and retrieve belongings and memorabilia left behind by victims.
Then make a decision.
“I learned to dive,” he says. “I felt that I might meet her one day, as long as I continued diving.”
Yasuo continued diving, completing more than 760 dives during his late fifties and early sixties.
The dead among the living
In Japan, the dead are honored in daily rituals, and it is believed that they remain a part of our lives long after their death.
The Buddhist practice of "Koyu" includes rituals, including making offerings and performing prayers at graves or altars, with the aim of giving departed loved ones peace and reassurance.
However, Yuko's remains were never found, so Yasuo was unable to visit her grave in this way.
“After diving again and again, I started to feel like she might be close to me,” Yasuo says. “It's a little different from visiting a grave, because she's not in a grave. It feels like I'm going to meet her.”
Yasuo's faith was severely tested by the disaster.
When he is in the depths of the sea and sees the devastation left by years of natural disasters, he becomes sad.
"When I look at the wreckage, I think: She couldn't have come back to the surface through all this," he says. "And when I think about that, I actually feel like I'm about to cry."
However, Yasuo does not hate the sea. Over time, accept that natural disasters are inevitable and beyond human control.
"I don't feel real hatred towards him or anything like that," he says. "At that time there was a tsunami and a rough sea. But on the other hand, you can catch a lot of wonderful things. There are beautiful landscapes."
In this sense, Yasuo embodies the attitude of a people who have suffered repeated natural disasters.
In the area where Tohoku lives, on the Pacific coast, tsunamis and earthquakes are not uncommon, and shrines and debris are scattered along the coast as a reminder of the power of nature, and that humans are part of this natural environment.
On his way to and from diving, Yasuo is smiling and friendly. When he talks about Yoko, his tone carries a bit of bitter humor.
"If we met, I think she would say to me first, out of the blue, 'You're getting old,'" he says.
But his dives represent a time for reflection. Fifty meters below sea level, he swims over a sunken, shattered landscape left by successive cycles of destruction.
“There are all kinds of underwater formations,” he says. “Some of them are like mountains, and you can float on top of them and look at them from above. So it really is a bit like flying.”
Yasuo grew up on the shore of this sea long before he met Yuko. He learned to swim and fish in its waters, and it has been a part of his life since his first memories.
This was his 763rd dive. Soon he would be back in the water again, staying close to Yoko.
