I guess nothing truly prepared me for the shock of how totally devastating the tsunami had been there, and quite how it had destroyed entire towns, killing over 15,000 people, with 7,000 still missing. Even though I’d seen and read a lot about it, still photos just can’t capture the 360 degree impact of the destruction.
At first I was afraid that the people there wouldn’t want to talk to us. I’d heard that Japanese culture meant being very private, particularly where foreigners were concerned, but I found people really wanted to tell their story. They would come across the post-apocalyptic looking landscape especially to find us. Three Westerners, arriving in one of the most emptied out areas of the region, possibly intrigued them too, but mainly, they were concerned that people weren’t hearing their story. So the film is a bit of a fable of healing, if you like, about how these people find the courage to move forward, and to revive and rebuild in the face of such loss and devastation, just as the cherry blossom, the symbol of Spring and new beginnings, is opening. It’s an encouraging and incredibly beautiful image of that re-birth, and I didn’t need to prompt people to draw the comparison in my interviews — they would spontaneously talk about cherry blossom, constantly. When people spoke about hope and moving forward, they would point at the trees and say, they drowned in salt water and they didn’t die, that’s why I’m hanging in there! So I didn’t feel I was imposing a sort of silly theme on them for my film, it came naturally and organically.
