HIGASHI-MATSUSHIMA, Miyagi Prefecture--Local residents and volunteer workers from elsewhere erected a symbolic torii gate on Dec. 26 for New Year worshippers on Nobiru beach, which was ravaged by the 2011 tsunami.
HIGASHI-MATSUSHIMA, Miyagi Prefecture--Local residents and volunteer workers from elsewhere erected a symbolic torii gate on Dec. 26 for New Year worshippers on Nobiru beach, which was ravaged by the 2011 tsunami.
Locals customarily installed a temporal shrine gate to allow worshippers to offer prayers to the ocean through it on the New Year holidays, but the tradition was discontinued after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
Residents reconstructed a bright red torii for the first time since the disaster last December. This year, they constructed a 3-meter-tall torii from logs from dead-standing cedar trees in the Nobiru district, which was swamped in the 10-meter tsunami that engulfed the coastal area.
Despite the three-year absence of the gate, a large number of people continued flocking to the beach to offer New Year prayers to the sea.