RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--Hikaru Okuno may be from distant Osaka Prefecture, but she's about to give her 400th performance for evacuees in the disaster-stricken Tohoku region.
RIKUZENTAKATA, Iwate Prefecture--Hikaru Okuno may be from distant Osaka Prefecture, but she's about to give her 400th performance for evacuees in the disaster-stricken Tohoku region.
Such unwavering devotion has earned Okuno the title of "diva of temporary housing facilities."
The words of her late grandmother, who taught her to sing, keep ringing in her ear: "You have to become a singer who can be of use to others."
It's precisely what she's doing, following a personal calling to entertain evacuees residing in temporary housing facilities who lost their homes to the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
Her landmark 400th performance is to be held in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, on June 11, commemorating the four years and three months since the earthquake and tsunami ravaged the northeastern region on March 11, 2011.
Okuno, from Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, first sang at Ofunato's temporary housing facility in February 2012, and she's been visiting residents in similar housing facilities in the Iwate and Miyagi prefectures at her own expense regularly ever since.
Clad in a neon green dress, Okuno performed in a meeting hall of a temporary housing facility in Rikuzentakata on the morning of June 9. After she sang a tune by famed Japanese singer Hibari Misora (1937-1989), she began talking to the group of elderly women attending the show.
"Everyone here today is so pretty. Princesses don't belong in temporary housing, do they?" said Okuno, causing the women to burst out laughing.
Okuno was taught to sing traditional folk songs by her grandmother at the age of 3. She became a professional singer after winning first place on the Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) show "NHK Nodo Jiman" (NHK Amateur Singing Contest) while she was still in junior high school.
She regularly sings in concerts and various events across the nation, and her repertoire includes Japanese "enka" ballads, pop songs and Western tunes.
Okuno recalls how a woman about the age of her mother started clinging to her feet when she sang for temporary housing residents in Rikuzentakata in February 2013. The woman said Okuno reminded her of the daughter she had lost in the tsunami.
She also told Okuno that she wanted to die so she could follow her daughter into the afterlife.
"Wait until the next time I come. Keep living until then," Okuno told the woman.
After this incident, the singer pondered hard, contemplating what she would tell the woman if she were her daughter. In the hopes of uniting the souls of those living and dead, she wrote the song "Yui" (Bonding).
She performed the song in front of the woman that autumn, singing the words, "The start of an endless journey is far from a farewell, the joy of having met with you lasts even after you die."
She thought up the lyrics sitting by the shore in Ofunato for hours at a time after dark.
"If I can't make one person feel at peace, there is no point in me being a singer," she thought, and was determined to quit singing if the woman did not accept her song.
Upon hearing the tune, the woman thanked her tearfully.
As Okuno believes the 11th of each month is a time for residents of the disaster-stricken region to spend in peace remembering the disaster, she has been avoiding holding concerts on that day. However, she decided to hold the June 11 concert as a special event to mark her 400th performance. She plans to sing "Yui" for the second time that day.
In the hopes of getting to know what life residing in a temporary housing is like, Okuno has been living in one such dwelling in Ofunato for about two weeks now. While she felt the warmth of her neighbors who tend to share a family-like bond with each other, she also learned how tough it was trying not to make a sound at night, as the walls of the housing unit are very thin.
But now that she's experienced the reality of living in temporary housing, she is even more determined to keep singing.
"I want to support the people until they will be able to leave the temporary housing facilities," she said.
Elderly residents in various temporary housing facilities in the region have told her that they keep living and waiting because she comes to visit them.
Okuno plans to keep performing so long as the people keep asking for her to come back.