One Year After the Noto Peninsula Earthquake [Wajima, Suzu] Fishermen’s Daily Lives Have Not Returned

We’re just scraping by.

We won’t be able to launch our boats tomorrow.

On January 4, at a fishing port in Wajima City, Ishikawa Prefecture, where the first landing of the year had been postponed, an elderly fisherman gazed out at the stormy sea in a daze. A full year has passed since the great earthquake hit the Noto Peninsula. The hardships of people living with the sea continue to this day.

Takayuki Hashimoto, 44, a fisherman who was working on a boat at anchor, said, “My income is really nothing.

The income is really nothing at all. If you want to make a living just by fishing, you can’t. Even if we catch fish, we don’t have enough staff to unload them. After a day of fishing, we would take another day off and repeat the process. Everyone has a mortgage. They have to go to work demolishing houses, or do something else on the days they can’t fish.

In Suzu City, located at the tip of the Noto Peninsula, there are still many houses that have collapsed. Even in the center of town, people are sparse. When we visited the local Suzu Shrine, a middle-aged woman who had come to pray lamented, “Even though it’s the New Year, there are no people here at all.

Shigenori Funaki, 68, a fisherman who is also a shrine parishioner, built a small house on his parking lot after the disaster and began living there with his two cats.

He said, “I managed to repair my boat, but my mother is still in temporary housing. If this cat had died in the earthquake, I wouldn’t be living here either.

The earthquake has drastically reduced the number of times he can go fishing.

Before the earthquake, there were about 200 boats and 400 to 500 fishermen, but now there are even fewer. There are still restrictions on fishing due to the lack of staff and damage to the harbor.

Toshihiko Uehama, 59, of the Wajima Branch Office of the Ishikawa Fishermen’s Cooperative Association, describes the current situation.

The first snow crab was landed in Wajima last November. Many people think that Wajima’s fishing has resumed in earnest after seeing the news, but repairs to the port and facilities have not been completed, and the fishermen are still managing by adjusting the amount they catch.

There is not enough manpower to unload the fish, and in some places fishing boats cannot dock due to the rising seabed. In the past, they used to go fishing every day, but now they are only able to go out once every two days.

Young people are also leaving the area.

Munekatsu Okado, 70, a freezer keeper at the fishermen’s cooperative, had been working in the nursing care industry before the earthquake. He had worked for the fishermen’s cooperative for 30 years, and was asked by the cooperative, which was short on staff, if he would help out.

After graduating from high school, I first joined Goshimaya, a long-established Wajima lacquerware company,” he said. You know, the big building that collapsed after the earthquake became the talk of the town. I worked there. It was a time when I could sell a lot of products just by going to department stores all over the country in a truck and saying, ‘Here are all the products we have today.

At first, Mr. Ohtsuno was paid 90,000 yen a month. He recalls with nostalgia the days when his sales performance improved and he found himself earning 400,000 yen, then 450,000 yen, and so on. However, Mr. Ohtsuno was also afraid that the booming economy would not last forever. When he was looking for another job, his mother suggested that he apply for an interview at a fishing cooperative.

When I went for the interview, the interviewer said to me, ‘Why are you wearing a suit? This is a fishing cooperative. I rushed back to change into my work clothes. But the starting salary was low: 90,000 yen. I was surprised at how cheap it was.

Even so, Mr. Ohtsuno worked until retirement. At the fishery cooperative, he learned his job by moving from one department to another, including the sales department, computer room, and freezing warehouse, and before long he began to find his work rewarding. Mr. Okaku is not alone. Many of those involved in the fishing industry were also supporting their livelihoods by the sea and feeling happy with the peaceful life in Wajima. Until the earthquake.

Mr. Ohzumi is very emphatic about the current state of Wajima.

Even after a year, I don’t think reconstruction has progressed at all. （There are not enough contractors to fix the buildings. Some young people have already gone to Kanazawa or other places and are not coming back. In the end, there are no people for business or tourism, and the town has no appeal. It’s very sad.

The author has several photographs in his possession. The photographer Soichiro Koriyama happened to take these photos of the Okitsuhime Shrine Festival in Wajima City in the summer before the earthquake (the sixth photo). It shows a large number of men wearing makeup carrying a portable shrine into the sea. Okutsu Himine Shrine is a guardian deity of the sea that the residents of Ama-machi, Wajima City, believe in. As its name suggests, Ama-machi derives from the name of a woman diver.

According to the “Report on Urgent Survey of Folklore Materials in Okunoto Sotoura” published by the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Folklore in 1975, Ama came to Noto from Kanezaki, Munakata City, Fukuoka Prefecture in the 12th year of the Eiroku Era (1688-1704) as a group of 13 men and women fishing in the region. These divers, called “Saigoku Ama,” are said to have gradually increased in number and settled in what is now Ama Town. Ama divers commute by boat to Hegura Island, 48 km north of Wajima, to catch abalone and turban shells, a practice that continues to this day. The “skills of divers’ fishing in Wajima” is designated as an important intangible folk cultural asset by the Japanese government.

The earthquake was not the only thing that threatened the continuation of the annual festival in this town of divers. Torrential rains in September of last year buried the grounds of the shrine in earth and sand, making it impossible to bring out the portable shrines. Last year, although the ritual was held on land, the water-entry ritual, the highlight of the festival, was cancelled. When we asked the Wajimasaki Shrine, the headquarters of the festival, about the situation, they replied, “We don’t know yet whether the mikoshi will be carried out again this year.

Abalone Fishing Stopped

Natsuki Kadoki, 44, president of the Wajima Divers Fishing Preservation and Promotion Association, was one of those involved in the festival. When we asked him what happened to the divers’ income after the earthquake, he replied, “If they can’t fish, their income is zero.

According to Ms. Kadoki, there are approximately 130 local ama divers now. Most of them are in their 50s and 60s, and Kadoki is on the younger side. Abalone fishing takes place from July to September. This is the best time of year for most divers to earn money. She cheerfully said, “I hope to resume abalone fishing this year,” but she must be anxious inside.

Ms. Kadoki spent her childhood in Hegura Island. Her mother and grandmother were both divers, and she spent her days playing in the sea while attending elementary and junior high schools on the island. She learned how to dive from older children and became a diver as a matter of course. Now, while working as a diver, she continues to work to preserve the resources of the sea.

The past year has flown by so fast.

Sayuri Sakaguchi, 43, a diver, speaks with sincerity. She is also a board member of the association. Satomi Hashimoto, 44, also a diver, happens to be the wife of Takayuki Hashimoto, a fisherman who interviewed me at Wajima fishing port. Many families in Ama-cho are engaged in the fishing industry as married couples, and the impact of the disaster on their finances is immeasurable.

On January 15, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries announced that the earthquake had caused 365.8 billion yen in damage to agriculture, forestry, and fisheries in the Noto Peninsula and neighboring prefectures. This is the second largest damage after the Great East Japan Earthquake and nearly three times the amount of the Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake.

Hegura Island’s sea was fine without any upheaval. But there was a tsunami, and our facilities were damaged, so we could not do business. Even if we catch abalone, we can’t store them if the refrigerator of the fishery cooperative is damaged” (Mr. Kadoki).

Noto was struck by two disasters, the earthquake and torrential rains. People who live with the sea are still waiting for the day when they can dive and sail again as they did in the past.

From “FRIDAY” February 7, 2025 issue