Photo/Illutration The deserted main street in front of JR Odaka Station in Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, on March 7 (Noriyoshi Ohtsuki)

Reconstruction and land development in coastal areas of the Tohoku region are nearly complete, 13 years after the destruction caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, but populations have not recovered.

Tohoku municipalities have struggled to attract new residents, particularly in Fukushima Prefecture. And many survivors of the disaster have relocated and have no plans to return to their communities.

The quake and tsunami devastated the region of northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, leaving 22,222 people dead or missing.

Those directly killed in the disaster totaled 15,900, while the number of missing people decreased by three from last year to 2,520, according to the National Police Agency.

The number of people who died in the aftermath of the disaster increased by about 100 over the past six years to 3,802, the Reconstruction Agency said.

At the peak, 470,000 residents were living as evacuees. The number is now 29,000, and nearly 90 percent of them are from Fukushima Prefecture.

The population has noticeably risen in and around Sendai, the capital of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in the Tohoku region.

But elsewhere, communities continue to become sparser.

Prefectural data shows a 12.7 percent population decline in 43 coastal municipalities across Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures compared with pre-disaster figures.

The rate of decline is 3.5 percentage points higher than the average across the three prefectures.

The decrease topped 30 percent in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, as well as Onagawa and Minami-Sanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, which were hit hardest by the tsunami.

In 11 municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture, the total population is only 16,000, less than a fifth of the pre-disaster figure. The population has plummeted by more than 80 percent in Namie, Futaba, Okuma and Tomioka in the prefecture.

Some areas within these four towns and three other municipalities remain designated as “difficult-to-return zones” due to radiation contamination from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

Evacuation orders were mostly lifted in July 2016 for the Odaka district of Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, located 20 kilometers north of the stricken nuclear plant.

The population increased to 3,800 in 2021, but it has since remained flat at 30 percent of the pre-disaster level.

Many of the current residents are elderly people who returned from their evacuation sites, according to the district head, Katsuhiko Hayashi.

The rest are newcomers who have moved in to work on the decommissioning of the nuclear plant or to start new businesses.

Local businesses and communities continue to face challenges related to the nuclear disaster.

China, for example, has banned imports of Japanese fishery products since the discharge of treated radioactive water into the ocean from the Fukushima plant started in August.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, Japan plans to rely more on nuclear power for its energy needs. The Diet last year passed a bill that extends the operating life of a nuclear reactor to more than 60 years.

Tohoku Electric Power Co. plans to restart the No. 2 reactor at its Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture around September. The reactor has remained offline since the 2011 quake and tsunami.

(This article was compiled from reports by staff writers Daisuke Yajima and Hideki Motoyama and senior staff writer Noriyoshi Ohtsuki.)

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