Even as we drove in on that September afternoon, I was conscious of their absence. Between the outskirts of Ishinomaki and the sea, there were few traffic lights, road signs, vending machines or telegraph poles. There were no strip-lit restaurants or twenty-four-hour convenience stores, no advertising hoardings or cash dispensers. Most transforming of all was the character of local sound: the song of birds and cicadas in the trees, the low noise of the river, the slap of waves and a subtle, pervasive, barely audible susurration, which took me days to identify – that of air passing through the
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