FUKUSHIMA--A passenger jet adorned with colorful images of lilies, daisies and other flowers from northeastern Japan took to the skies on May 14 as a symbol of the rebirth of the disaster-hit region.
The Tohoku Flower Jet was designed to support the Tohoku region, which is still rebuilding from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.
The fuselage of the All Nippon Airways aircraft is covered with photos of 17 flowers commonly found in Fukushima and five other prefectures of the Tohoku region. The pictures were taken by 56-year-old photographer Katsuhiro Noguchi.
“Flowers can give you a life force during times of hardship,” said Noguchi, who is from Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture. “I hope people will feel the revitalized Tohoku when they see the aircraft at airports around Japan.”
The Tohoku Flower Jet is the brainchild of young employees of ANA Air Service Fukushima Co., an ANA subsidiary that provides ground support at Fukushima Airport. The employees commissioned Noguchi to design the jet to “show the bright side of the current situation in Fukushima (to the people of Japan).”
Photos of 10 species, including sunflowers, daisies and wild lilies, were shot in Fukushima Prefecture. Miyagi Prefecture is represented by snapdragons, gerberas and carnations. Roses came from Aomori, camellia from Iwate, stock from Akita and alstromeria from Yamagata.
Noguchi has been taking photos in the Tohoku region and selected flowers that had their own stories to tell for the project.
One of the photos features kingcups that were shot in a forested park in Otama, Fukushima Prefecture, where children stopped visiting after the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
“Children are supposed to play in nature, but they are reluctant to touch the flowers for fear of radioactive contamination,” Noguchi said. “But the kingcup was flowering beautifully--the same as always."
Noguchi remembers seeing carnations at a mortuary in Natori, a city in Miyagi Prefecture hit hard by the tsunami.
A flower farmer whose greenhouses were washed away by the tsunami picked the few surviving carnations and discreetly offered them to the dead.
But it was not all sad things that Noguchi encountered.
He saw a man making paper flowers from corrugated cardboard and a woman in her 80s watering morning glories blooming at a gravel-covered temporary housing site.
The Tohoku Flower Jet, a Boeing 737-800 that seats 170 passengers, is scheduled to make flights nationwide through 2020.