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Photographer Q. Sakamaki was in Iwate Prefecture, in Japan’s Tohoku region, in March to document the one-year anniversary of the devastating Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami. As of this March, the National Police Agency of Japan had reported roughly 16,000 deaths and 3,200 people missing as a result of the disaster, which also triggered nuclear explosions and leaks at the Fukushima reactor. Clockwise from above: Scenes from the Buddhist/Shinto memorial service in Iwate; a man praying at the ruins of a house where a relative who was killed in the disaster lived; children’s toys left in an uninhabited building — the earthquake caused the ground level to drop by a meter, so people are no longer allowed to live in this area of Iwate; a year later, huge piles of wreckage from the earthquake and tsunami are still being carted away; local residents held hands atop a massive anti-tsunami barrier wall that wasn’t tall enough to keep out the surging flood waters on March 11, 2011.
