ONAGAWA, Miyagi Prefecture--About 100 volunteers from around the country gathered together to help carry a mikoshi, or portable shrine, during a spring festival in this disaster-hit town on May 3.
ONAGAWA, Miyagi Prefecture--About 100 volunteers from around the country gathered together to help carry a mikoshi, or portable shrine, during a spring festival in this disaster-hit town on May 3.
Onagawa has seen its population drastically decrease since being devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Without enough people to shoulder the roughly 100-kilogram miniature shrine, Kumano Jinja shrine and other organizations solicited helpers via the Internet.
The volunteers joined about 50 local parishioners of Kumano Jinja and paraded the mikoshi around the town where debris still remains.
Calling out “chosai, chosai,” they also slowly navigated the portable shrine down the 200-step stairway from the hilltop where Kumano Jinja stands.
“All I can do is shoulder the portable shrine, but I am just happy to be useful,” said Tairiku Watanuki, 43, a company employee from Tokyo.
He added that he also carries the mikoshi in his town in Tokyo.
Yasuo Kimura, 70, a representative of the shrine parishioners, said: “Thanks to the support (from the volunteers), we were able to protect our tradition. I hope that this festival will lead to the recovery of spirits (of local people).”