The Ground Self-Defense Force troops have gone. So too the old blackboard with sheets of paper taped to it. I still remember a few of the names written in long lists there — the names of those whose muddied bodies could be identified after they were brought on military trucks to the makeshift morgue in Ishinomaki's central gymnasium.

In the days after last year's magnitude-9 Great East Japan Earthquake and the awful tsunami it triggered, survivors would gingerly approach that blackboard one after another and scour the lists for something they desperately hoped to not find. For too many, a few characters written there in black ink would shatter all hope just as suddenly and completely as the waves had wiped out their homes and communities on March 11.

The scenes of bereavement — an elderly woman barely able to walk, a young boy with hands buried deep into his eyes — had filled me with the kind of grief I'd thought was reserved exclusively for the passing of people you know and love.