RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--Coming-of-Age Day events, for young people who have turned or will turn 20 years old by the end of March, were scheduled throughout Japan on Jan. 14. But at the ceremony here on Jan. 13, participants also remembered the friends they had lost in the 2011 tsunami.
RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--Coming-of-Age Day events, for young people who have turned or will turn 20 years old by the end of March, were scheduled throughout Japan on Jan. 14. But at the ceremony here on Jan. 13, participants also remembered the friends they had lost in the 2011 tsunami.
With some of them holding portraits of those killed in the disaster, "new adults" offered a moment of silence for the 11 who were unable to commemorate this important day. This year, 266 received invitations for the ceremony, in Rikuzentakata, but some could not attend.
Following the ceremony, the new adults were grouped by the junior high school they graduated from and posed for the camera.
In the photograph of the Takata Daiichi junior high school graduates, three of the participants held portraits of victims on their laps.
Minami Shimamura, a 20-year-old junior college student in Chiba Prefecture, remembered her deceased friend Shoko Kanno. They had both belonged to the soft tennis club.
"I have to live a decent life so that I do not disappoint her," Shimamura said.
"I wanted to attend the ceremony with them," said Riho Sugawara, a graduate of the same school, with tears in her eyes.