ONAGAWA, Miyagi Prefecture--When Yasuo Takamatsu is overwhelmed by guilt, he listens to a piano solo to experience the feeling that he is talking to the beloved wife he lost more than three years ago.
ONAGAWA, Miyagi Prefecture--When Yasuo Takamatsu is overwhelmed by guilt, he listens to a piano solo to experience the feeling that he is talking to the beloved wife he lost more than three years ago.
The song, “Yuko Takamatsu,” is named after Takamatsu’s wife, who has been missing since she was swept away in the tsunami that struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011.
The music was created by a French composer who was inspired by Takamatsu’s relentless efforts to find Yuko. She was 47 years old when the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered the tsunami.
After the disaster, Takamatsu started taking diving lessons in his spare time. He passed the written exam to obtain a diving license, and then searched the waters off the Tohoku coast for the body of his wife.
The efforts of Takamatsu, 57, were featured in a French television news show in March. Slyvain Guinet, a music composer living in the Rhone-Alpes region in southeastern France, saw the footage and was moved by the “incredible love story.”
“I could not believe my eyes. I thought he was a man who has incredible will and strength,” Guinet, 36, said in an e-mail. “I thought it was my duty to provide a little ray of sunshine to this brave man.”
Guinet offered to compose a piece for Takamatsu through his friend, Haruko Uehara, a 49-year-old pianist in Japan.
Takamatsu listened to Guinet’s works on an online video site and thought his wife would have enjoyed the music.
He sent an e-mail, with Yuko’s photo attached, to the French composer.
“My wife, Yuko, is sweet and courteous and does not like quarrels,” he wrote.
Guinet composed the four-and-a half-minute solo piano piece and posted “Yuko Takamatsu” on the Internet at
Many people, including those from South Korea, the United States and Europe, have downloaded the score.
In April, Takamatsu received an e-mail from Guinet, saying, “The name of your wife will never be forgotten.”
Takamatsu replied in a thank-you note: “The music reminded me of the 22 years with my sweet wife.”
On the morning of March 11, 2011, Takamatsu drove his wife to the local branch of Shichijushichi Bank where she worked.
On the drive over, Yuko asked her husband what he would like for dinner, adding, “You can’t say ‘anything.’”
Takamatsu replied, “Then, I would like fish.”
After the magnitude-9.0 earthquake rocked the area, Takamatsu received an e-mail from Yuko: “Are you all right? I want to get home as soon as possible.”
He waited for her at their home, assuming she had fled to higher ground before the tsunami reached the shore. She never returned.
Takamatsu said he still feels guilt for surviving the disaster that took away his wife.
When he is not working as a bus driver, he dives during the day in his continuing search for Yuko’s body. At night, he listens to “Yuko Takamatsu.”
“This piece is my treasure,” he wrote to Guinet.