ICHINOSEKI, Iwate Prefecture--On March 11, manga creator Aruto Asuka rode out the powerful shaking that rattled her home here in Ichinoseki. She spent the next five days in her blacked-out dwelling with no electricity, worrying about the fate of a friend in Ofunato on the tsunami-ravaged Sanriku Coast.
ICHINOSEKI, Iwate Prefecture--On March 11, manga creator Aruto Asuka rode out the powerful shaking that rattled her home here in Ichinoseki. She spent the next five days in her blacked-out dwelling with no electricity, worrying about the fate of a friend in Ofunato on the tsunami-ravaged Sanriku Coast.
"Ichinoseki is located inland," Asuka said. "It suffered less damage than the coastal areas. I had big, conflicted feelings about that."
Those big, conflicted feelings are now being explored in the third volume of "Gogai! Iwate Chaguchagu Shinbunsha" (Extra edition! Iwate Chaguchagu newspaper company), Asuka's manga, whose main character is modeled after a young female reporter of a local newspaper in Iwate Prefecture. The third volume was published in October.
Asuka depicted not only her experience as a survivor of the Great East Japan Earthquake, but also her thoughts for the areas hit hard by the temblor and tsunami.
The manga is a story about a young woman, Sakiru Bando, a newspaper reporter in a branch office in the southern part of the prefecture. It was serialized in "Be Love," a women's manga magazine published by Kodansha Ltd., from 2009 to August this year.
Asuka's feelings were described in a chapter, titled, "Sanriku no Umi" (Sea of Sanriku). The main character, Bando, went to the Koishihama district in Ofunato on assignment and had a reunion with a young fisherman and his wife. The two had married after visiting the Sanriku Railway's Koishihama Station, which is said to be a kind of a lovers' lane.
The station, located near a mountain, was spared damage from the tsunami. After the disaster, everyone was desperate for survival. The wife then became pregnant. But she hesitated to give birth to a baby when she thought about her relatives who lost their small children or other family members in the disaster. But her husband kept encouraging her.
The manga is a fiction. However, Asuka said: "The sense of guilt about being happy (with the birth of the baby) results from my conflicted feelings. After all, I am living without any inconvenience in this inland area. Such guilty feelings cannot be described in a light state of mind. But I want to convey Iwate (to my readers) through manga."
The third volume carries a special article, titled, "Funbaru Iwatejin" (Iwate people who are hanging on), which contains stories and interviews with volunteers and newspaper reporters working in coastal areas.
The third volume is priced at 590 yen (about $7.40), including tax.