The reconstruction of life in the coastal areas of Tohoku devastated by the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster remains a mixed picture four years on. More evacuees are leaving temporary housing units to rebuild their own homes or to move into public rental housing built for displaced people. Over the past year, evacuation advisories have been lifted on some areas around Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant that had been rendered off-limits since the triple meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The restoration of tsunami-shattered infrastructure, such as port facilities and railroad networks, has made rapid progress. Symbolic of this, the Joban Expressway stretching from Saitama to Miyagi prefectures was finally completed March 1 after the last remaining section — whose construction has been delayed due to radiation fallout from the Tepco plant — was finished. The government's five-year intensive program to rebuild the disaster-ravaged areas — for which it has set aside a total of more than ¥26 trillion — will conclude in fiscal 2015.

None of these developments, however, mean the reconstruction will be over anytime soon. Four years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami left 15,823 people dead and 2,586 others missing in the worst-hit prefectures of Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima, almost 230,000 people remain displaced — down by 38,000 from a year earlier. Nearly half of the evacuees hail from Fukushima, where reconstruction efforts have been complicated by the nuclear disaster. About 56,000 people remain evacuated away from the three prefectures and scattered across the country.