Director Satō Sonomi Explores the 2011 Tsunami Aftermath in Two Films

A Gap Year Film Production

Miyagi Prefecture’s Ōkawa region is near the mouth of Kitakami River. The powerful earthquake on March 11, 2011, triggered multiple tsunami which pushed upstream, wreaking widespread damage. At Ōkawa Elementary School, 74 students and 10 faculty members lost their lives. One of them was Satō’s younger sister, then in sixth grade.

Four years later, Satō entered Nihon University to study cinema, her dream even before the disaster.

“As a child, I loved writing stories, drawing cartoons, and taking photographs. I thought I could combine them through filmmaking, and started writing scripts without much of a clue. Even then, I wanted to make a film in my home region. The area is blessed with stunning natural scenery. Of course, you hear all kinds of gossip because it’s such a small community, but I thought it would be interesting to capture those kinds of interpersonal relationships on film.”

A scene from Haru o kasanete (Spring After Spring Passes Us By). (© Satō Sonomi)

But by the time she had reached university, the scenery and people she had hoped to film were no longer there for her. Nevertheless, she had not lost her dream of filming in the region as her own personal means of confronting the disaster. Following much agonizing, she decided to defer her studies after her junior year to make a film independently.

“I wanted to shoot a story against the backdrop of the disaster. I really wished to make it as my graduation work, but the school sets a thirty-minute limit on those, and also I didn’t want to drag my fellow students into it. Everyone was hoping to make something fun and entertaining, so it didn’t feel right asking them to join me in the disaster-affected area to cover such a grim topic.”

Satō spent most of her gap year writing the script while working to save up enough to realize her vision. It was only at the end of the year that she could finally do casting and start shooting. The 10 days spent filming in March 2019 became a 45-minute drama, Haru o kasanete (Spring After Spring Passes Us By).

Fiction Sprinkled with Reality

The main character, Yūmi, has also lost her younger sister in the tsunami. She is an eighth grader, as Satō was at the time of the disaster. The film begins with her being interviewed for television. She bravely describes her painful memories and is shown praying in front of her home’s Buddhist altar: “I want to live life to the full, with no regrets, to make up for my sister.”

Saitō Sae, who plays Yūmi, moved to Ishinomaki during elementary school and joined a local drama group. (© Satō Sonomi)

Most people watched the disaster unfold at the time from far away. But of course, we only saw a slice of that experience. The film leaves us wondering about Yūmi’s day-to-day life, and of other feelings that she cannot express in words. Haru o kasanete painstakingly depicts this from the perspective of one who actually experienced this.

“It wasn’t only me,” stresses Satō. “I interviewed other children in the area to prepare this work. Yūmi is a fictional character—she isn’t me alone. She reflects different pieces of everyone’s experiences.”

The story follows nine months of Yūmi’s daily life in ninth grade, her last year of junior high, after school resumes in late April 2011.

It accurately recreates the postdisaster reality of students, who attended class in spare rooms of other schools, dressed in a mishmash of uniforms. Students also passed through serieses of temporary accommodations set up for rescue effort volunteers, and were sometimes tutored by older student volunteers.

Yūmi and Rei (played by Saitō Keika) both lost little sisters, but deal with it in different ways. (© Satō Sonomi)

Satō reflects on her school life at the time. “It was difficult talking to my fellow students. People’s homes were swept away, and they’d lost family members. Everyone faced hardships, so it was difficult to know how much you could talk about things. Most of the time, I tried to avoid mentioning the disaster.”

Yūmi’s family home, which survived the tsunami, is visited by reporters almost every night, who stay until late, interviewing the parents about their situation. At times, interviews continue to midnight, and after the journalists leave her parents doze off in the living room until dawn. According to Satō, this actually happened at her home.

Yūmi meets Ayari (played by Akiyama Taichi), a student volunteer from Tokyo. (© Satō Sonomi)

Although she tries hard to answer interviewers’ questions, sometimes Yūmi clams up—something Satō says has its roots in her reality. “The interviewers bore no ill intentions, but it was still painful for interviewees. Everyone was sincere and kind, but their sense of duty sometimes unintentionally caused us grief. Nobody was in the wrong. I wanted to show the complexity of this situation in my film.”

(© Hanai Tomoko)

An Elementary School as a Setting

The relationship between Yūmi and her friend Rei drives the story against a backdrop of real incidents. Satō developed the two entirely fictional characters incorporating elements of herself and others she knows.

“I felt best equipped to depict children around fourteen years old, my age at the time, because there were so many things I couldn’t say to the adults around me. I found myself saddened by the way we forget those sensations as we grow up, so I wanted to create a record of them.”

Although Yūmi and Rei have drifted apart, the film creates a stage for their reunion in the end: their old school, Ōkawa Elementary, where they both lost their sisters. Satō also attended this school in real life.

“Even though I was just a child, every day I thought how happy I was: I loved my time at elementary school. After I moved on to junior high, the fate of my old school came as a great shock. The oddly shaped school building was so endearing. I always thought it would be an interesting setting for a film. That’s why I wanted to shoot the last scene there.”

A shot in the Ōkawa Elementary School library. (© Satō Sonomi)

In July 2021, the building was designated as a disaster monument by the city of Ishinomaki, but Satō filmed there over two years earlier. It is a valuable record of the building before it underwent repair work.

“After the disaster, only families of victims were allowed to enter the site, so I thought that filming there would give more people a chance to see it. At the same time, I did worry if it was inconsiderate to bring cameras in to shoot a film in a place where so many people lost their lives. I mustered up the courage to speak with the chairperson of the bereaved families association to ask for permission.

Ōkawa Elementary School before the decision to preserve it, as seen in Satō’s university graduation work, Anata no hitomi ni hanasetara (If These Letters Reach Your Eyes). Local volunteers formed a special group to show visitors around the site. (© Satō Sonomi)

Her Decision to Film a Documentary

Before its designation as a disaster monument, there had been suggestions to demolish the school building. The strongest calls for preservation came from former students, by then in junior and senior high school. Satō, then a high school senior, was among them.

“We understood how just the sight of the school brought back painful memories for some. But we still wanted them to keep it. Realizing that it would be demolished unless someone spoke up, we asked for volunteers to openly share their opinions.”

A public meeting took place on the day when residents voted on whether to demolish the school or preserve it. Up to then, the majority had been in favor of demolition, but the appeal from the students swayed opinion in the final hour.

The public meeting was captured on film in Anata no hitomi ni hanasetara, the 29-minute documentary Satō created to earn her film degree. This work screens together with Haru o kasanete. In her graduate work, the director describes the Ōkawa region today and her own feelings in letters addressed to her deceased sister.

The director reads a series of letters composed to her sister, in a film depicting Ōkawa and its residents. (© Satō Sonomi)

“At first I didn’t want to make a documentary,” admits the director. “It felt too confronting. Also, because I have been filmed so many times, I could envisage how hard it would be for other people. With fiction, nobody needs to make that sacrifice. But in the end, my decision to make a documentary for my graduation piece was because it was something I could film solo. When I returned to university, I was a year behind my former classmates, and they had already formed their working groups, so I didn’t want to interfere with their projects.”

While planning her film, she pondered things she hadn’t been able to show in her previous outing. In particular, she wondered if she could explore the complex situation of Ōkawa Elementary School in the postdisaster years.

“Anata no hitomi is not simply a message to the deceased,” Satō stresses, looking back at the lawsuit brought in 2014 by families of some of the lost students against the Ishinomaki and Miyagi governments. “During the court case, the bereaved relatives who were plaintiffs were victims of slander. There were even locals who bad-mouthed them. Court should be a setting for seeking the truth, so I was heartbroken at the critics who were either blind to this, or willfully ignorant of it. My film is also addressed to them. Perhaps it emerged from a sense of anger.”

The “miracle boy” Tetsuya, who made news after he survived when he was swept away while fleeing the tsunami, also makes an appearance, reading a letter written to his fifth grade classmates. (© Satō Sonomi)

Overcoming Hesitations towards Screening

In March 2021, a decade after the disaster, Satō’s two films were screened at a small venue in Ishinomaki, but she had no other opportunities for screenings for some time after, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I actually faced some opposition again when it came to screening my films. At one point I felt like putting them to rest. I didn’t have much confidence about the quality of my films, and given the delicate nature of the topic, I was afraid of what viewers might think. Also, I didn’t want to upset the locals. When I thought like that, it was tough. I put my heart on the line to make the films, and it felt that if I put them to rest, I would be denying a part of myself.”

But in 2022, she started receiving screening requests from around Japan. In December, a showing at Ōkawa Community Center, built after the disaster, attracted 200 viewers. This led to over 30 follow-up screenings across the country.

“In the past, I made my films mainly to settle issues so that I could move on. Through the screenings I’ve been able to gradually gain some objective distance from my work and ease my inner conflict. I also received unexpectedly kind feedback, and I’ve been pleased people have viewed my work as something more than simply films made by a disaster victim. They have taken me to many places and helped me to meet a wide range of people. Now, I’m finally glad I made them.”

(© Hanai Tomoko)

March 2025 will mark 14 years since the time when Satō faced cameras daily as a victim and a bereaved family member. Soon, she will have lived as many years since the disaster as she did before it.

“I always wanted to make my own films, in my own voice, instead of through someone else’s perspective. I’m so glad my wish was fulfilled. Now, in the Noto region, there are children suffering the same as we did, from the January 2024 quake there. I hope my films can be of some help to inspire them.”

(© Satō Sonomi)

Trailer

(Originally published in Japanese. Written by Matsumoto Takuya of Nippon.com. Banner photo: The director Satō Sonomi. © Hanai Tomoko.)