NATORI, Miyagi -- A man who lost his entire family to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami is growing sunflowers at the former site of his home in this northeast Japan city in the place of their lost souls, and the flowers are now in full bloom.

       Though the landscape in the city's Yuriage district, where the home of Ground Self-Defense Force (SDF) officer Kiyokazu Sasaki, 54, was located, has totally changed, with no houses along the Teizan Canal remaining, the large flowers waving in the sea wind convey that people used to live there.

       Sasaki, who currently lives in Tagajo, Miyagi Prefecture, lost his 14-year-old daughter Kazumi, a student at Yuriage Junior High School at the time, his wife Ritsuko, then 42, and his parents-in-law in March 2011. Two years later, as Sasaki learned about "Haruka no Himawari" (Haruka's Sunflowers) -- a symbol of recovery from the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake that struck west Japan and was named after then 11-year-old girl Haruka Kato, who lost her life in the disaster -- he started growing sunflowers at his SDF apartment. The flowers that grow toward the sun gradually began shining in Sasaki's heavy heart.

       Sasaki started telling his heartbreaking stories in 2015. In his online lecture for junior high school students in west Japan's Osaka Prefecture on Aug. 6, he looked back on the days when he had been in despair and stood up again, and conveyed the importance of life, saying, "I want you to spend each day while cherishing encounters with people and things that you can only see in that particular season, like flowers."

       At Sasaki's former home, each sunflower plant has branched out and about a dozen flowers have bloomed. More flowers will probably blossom next year. He looked at the dazzling flowers, saying, "Their existence is important, so I take care of them in the place of my family."

       (Japanese original by Ami Jinnai, Sendai Bureau)

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