A New Hope

It has been 13 years since I started driving around the Pacific coast of Tohoku to take photos immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake. When I drive near the sea, I cannot see the sea because of the high seawalls, but when I stop the car and climb the seawalls, I can see the sea as it was in the past. In the past few years, artificial hills for disaster prevention have been built along the coast from southern Sendai to northern Fukushima Hamadori, where the elevation is low, and I tend to take pictures of them in response to their shape, which looks like a round burial mound from the Kofun period. I feel it is not a bad thing to be forced to take pictures. I am attracted by the name “Hill of Hope,” though it is boring because the shape of the hill is the same in every photo. I wonder what people in the future will think of this hill if it is still standing a thousand years from now. I will keep the photo.