Japanese relief

Unusable cars are stacked up like iron sculptures, while destroyed houses nearby vanish bit by bit every day. Ruined factories, caved in ceilings, broken glass: That's how it looks in Natori, near Sendai - located two hours north of Tokyo and close to the epicenter of the March 11th earthquake.

The earthquake and ensuing tsunami didn't just cause the atomic catastrophe at Fukushima. Within moments, the events destroyed entire streets and neighborhoods, changing lives permanently along the way.

Replanting, renewing

But the people in the region are proving they aren't so easily defeated. Already, newly-planted trees line the sidewalks of streets which have been restored - even if the streets often lead nowhere right now.

And, the community's will to move forward was reflected in the admirable posture and intense gaze of the approximately 200 Natori residents who gathered at their city's Performing Arts Center for a concerrt one afternoon in late October.

The center is housed in a building that once included three performance spaces. The earthquake rendered two unusable; only the third and smallest remains. Local guests gathered to see the concert given by the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin (DSO). No tickets were sold to the event as the aim of the concert was to offer a sign of solidarity.

Indestructible bridges

DSO musicians were on a three-work tour with Japanese conductor Yutaka Sado through his home country - taking stage in Matsumoto, Fuji, Yokohama and Tokyo's NHK Hall. Originally, Sendai was on the program, but the concert hall there also fell victim to the catastrophe.



Nonetheless, the musicians wanted to perform in the region to send a message to its residents: You haven’t been forgotten. Cultural life will return, and so will something resembling normality.

An ensemble of 25 string players came to Natori with that message in mind.

"This performance is perhaps the most important in our tour; it's a matter of the heart for us," said orchestra member Michael Mücke to the audience by way of a translator.

"We want to give back some of the warmth and kindness that we have often received during our previous performances as guests in Japan," Mücke said, adding that music builds bridges that no water or wind can destroy.

Pride, defiance, optimism

"Eine kleine Nachtmusik" by Mozart is one such bridge: known and understood across the world, it was an ideal opener. Menselssohn's "String Symphony No. 10 in B Minor" and Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings" are melancholy, longing works that are nonetheless full of pride, optimism and defiance and were perfect for the program. The audience seemed to feel that the music spoke to them. And the encore was nearly as well-known as the piece that opened the program. The group parted with the "Air" from "Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major" by Johann Sebastian Bach.

The audience's appreciation that these pieces could be heard in Natori was palpable. Isoo Sasaki, the mayor, explained how entire villages had been wiped out during the spring - not from the earthquake but from the enormous flood wave that followed it. In the following days, the atomic disaster in Fukushima, 90 kilometers (56 miles) away, was what dominated media coverage abroad. But for many Japanese residents, it has been the devastation of life as they knew before March 11 that has been hardest to deal with.

"We can't thank you enough that you came," said Sasaki. "This concert is part of a healing process."

Author: Udo Badelt / gsw
Editor: Louisa Schaefer