When the Great Northeast Earthquake struck Fukushima in Japan’s Tohoku region on March 11 2011, it triggered a tsunami that sent a fifty-foot wave rushing inland at over fifty miles an hour.

In less than a day, nearly 18,000 people were dead or missing, and almost 300,000 were homeless. The old normal was gone. Today, communities in the region are struggling to reinvent their lives, but what will their future look like in a context that is permanently changed?

For many, this is not just a matter of regaining property or livelihoods, it’s a profoundly spiritual question that centers on the meaning of happiness and the quality of life.

The earthquake – widely known in Japan as ‘3/11″ – toppled buildings across the region, but it was especially damaging in the coastal towns. In many places the ground literally fell away, dropping by three feet and more. The next day, three of the six reactors exploded at the Dai-Ichi nuclear power plants in Fukushima, while the containment structures for spent nuclear fuel rods were severely compromised at a fourth. Within a very short time, radiation forced another 60,000 people from their homes.

This reactor, Dai-Ichi Four, is now one of the most dangerous […]