Photo/Illutration Miharu Yanai, holding her father Makio’s camera, stands in front of a TV camera Makio was using when he was killed by the massive eruption of Mount Unzen’s Fugendake in Shimabara, Nagasaki Prefecture, in 1991. (Satsuki Tanahashi)

Thirty-one-year-old Miharu Yanai remembers the days when she felt overwhelmed by guilt from the tragic death of her father 30 years ago. 

She was only a year old in 1991 when the massive volcanic eruption from Mount Unzen’s Fugendake peak killed her father, Makio, 31, a cameraman for Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK).

She is his only child.

Makio was covering the eruption in Shimabara, Nagasaki Prefecture, when he was swept up by a pyroclastic flow--a fast-moving mix of volcanic matter and superhot gases--and died.

The eruption killed 43 people, including journalists, taxi drivers and firefighters.

But the stern eyes of the public turned toward members of the news media like Makio, who remained in the area despite warnings from local firefighters about the dangers of getting too close to the violent pyroclastic flows.

Public sentiment was that if the press had stayed out of the area, the firefighters and taxi drivers would not have died.

Growing up, Yanai learned the burdens of bereavement.

Her mother rarely spoke about Makio. But her grandmother and relatives told her about him when she visited his grave.

The internet meanwhile offered her ample access to the unfiltered views of the public.

“What he did is murder,” one post said about Makio. “Shame on him,” said another.

It was too much for Yanai.

But her mother told her: “The media was probably meeting the desire of viewers who want to watch interesting news. If nothing changes, there will be people who experience the same grief like us.”

When Yanai was 15, a TV camera that Makio used when he died turned up.

Yanai, with her mother and grandmother, went to the Unzen Disaster Memorial Hall in Shimabara that was storing the camera.

After seeing the memento, Yanai noticed a video airing in the hall.

In the video produced by a commercial TV station, the hall’s director, who was a city employee at the time of the eruption, was being interviewed.

“Drivers, journalists, police officers … Every one of them had different emotions,” said the figure in the video.

Yanai felt the remark lifted some of the great weight off her shoulders. She began to feel it is OK for her to have her own feelings about the incident.

When she returned home, she took out Makio’s single-lens reflex camera that had been stored deep inside a closet and took it to a repair shop.

At university, she studied photography.

When she turned 20, she watched family videos Makio shot that had been stored at home.

One of them showed Yanai when she was just a newborn. She could hear Makio’s low and kind voice. Her mother then took the video camera, filming Makio with the baby.

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Makio Yanai (Provided by Miharu Yanai)

He was tall and showed a carefree smile.

It was the first time she could remember seeing Makio alive. Yanai started to cry as she watched the scene.

She picked up Makio’s camera and took a picture of the screen. The shot, titled “In search of love,” was later displayed at a photo exhibition.

In 2010, Yanai visited the Fugendake peak alone for the first time. She set down a tripod in the area where the press had gathered at the time of eruption.

She used Makio’s camera and took pictures of the mountain, reliving Makio’s view.

After graduating university, Yanai studied at an art university in France. She returned to Japan in late January this year and became a company employee in Tokyo.

Her pictures of Fugendake have been on display at the memorial hall since May.

On June 3, Yanai is expected to attend for the first time a memorial ceremony held in Shimabara, which will mark the 30th anniversary of the disaster.

“The past 30 years was for me to learn what happened,” Yanai said. “Now I have something I need to pass on, and I will think about what I should say.”

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