A new shop opened on Feb. 27 in the growing, new area of Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture.
Yonezawa Shokai is a wholesale packing material business, and its president, Yuichi Yonezawa, 55, can be seen stocking the shelves and arranging the products on his own.
Yonezawa miraculously survived the tsunami that followed the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 by escaping to the roof of the building where his former store used to stand. However, both his parents and his younger brother perished in the disaster.
The reopened business is in a temporary shopping district that sits on high ground, and Yonezawa runs the enterprise while also continuing to remain active as a storyteller at the former building, which has been preserved as a relic of the disaster.
Nine years have passed since that fateful day, but Yonezawa's dream of reopening his store has come to fruition.
"Using this place as a base, I aim to tell the story of the tsunami."
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