How a man’s decision to revive a “miracle piano” helped heal Japan’s tsunami scars

Iwaki, Fukushima, Japan – The graduation day started to be sunny and beautiful at Toyoma Junior High, and the 47 members of the senior class had a lively mood. Just being at Toyoma Junior High was a day at the beach: the school overlooked Usuiso, one of the most popular strips of shore in Japan, and the state of boredom was captured in a blackboard message written: ” Thanks for the last three years! It was fun ! ”

In the gym, while the spectators, families and classmates watched, the students in their navy blue uniform sang the school song for the last time, accompanied, as always, by Toyoma’s fine grand piano.

Instead of the cheaper uprights usually bought by schools and parents, Toyoma was blessed with a high-performance “C5” Yamaha piano, endowed by a local seafood mogul whose niece was a graduate.

For more than a decade, the piano has provided the soundtrack for Toyoma Jr. High, performing new student serenades in April, accompanying school choirs, and sending graduates each March.

After a morning of speeches and diplomas, the class of 2011 came out into the world. They never imagined he was about to be overthrown.

Disaster strikes

According to a local nonprofit group, it took two months for a Ground Self-Defense Force unit to take out the gym, whose location on the beach left it exposed to the full fury of the devastating tsunami that hit the coast. is in Japan. year.

Fortunately the school had emptied a few hours before the 28-foot waves hit, leaving the gym clock frozen at 3:28; but over 100 other residents of Usuiso district would lose their lives.

As rescue workers penetrated to their knees, their commander suddenly noticed the grand piano in a corner of the stage, sadly overturned on one side. The decision of the instrument could have sentimental value for local residents, field officer Isamu Yamaguchi he ordered his men to gently carry the sad wreck to the middle of the gym floor, where they used their drinking water bottles to carefully wipe off the mud.

Later, in an emotional gathering organized by the PTA, several hundred residents of Usuiso district gathered around the now silent piano to sing the a cappella school song. The gym will be destroyed shortly.

But before that could happen, Hiroshi Endo appeared.

“It’s not time for me to be gone”

If he had had his way, Endo would never have been near Fukushima at that time.

His home and piano store Iwaki had escaped unscathed from the earthquake and tsunami, but then radiation levels rose after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power accident plant 30 miles north.

Terrified, he and his family fled 150 miles south to Chiba Prefecture. But then his phone started ringing.

“Many customers contacted me, saying that their pianos had fallen over (in an earthquake). I thought it was not the time to leave,” CBS News told his store. Despite serious doubts, Endo returned.

He heard about the ruined piano sitting in the Toyoma Junior High gym, and his curiosity won him over.

“The outside was pretty clean, but the inside was full of muck.” Unsalvageable, he thought.

But an inscription on the right side of the piano caught his eye: “Donated by Hiromatsu Shike, September 1999.” It was not a standard school acquisition, he realized, but tangible evidence of the spirit that bound this community together.

Supported by the discovery, after 10 days he made his decision: he will try to make the piano play again. After a few months of bureaucracy with the school board, ownership of the £ 770 instrument was finally transferred to Endo.

Never wash a piano

“Until then, it smelled awful,” he recalls. – Rot was installed. The ropes were rusty. Most of the keyboard had been ripped off, and the few remaining keys made a muffled sound.

Inside, the piano was so full of pips that it looked like a box of sand. Endo’s two sons, also tuners and piano technicians, declared the instrument beyond saving.

With no idea where to start, Endo began by dismantling the 10,000 components of the piano. He quickly decided that most hammers, shock absorbers and other parts would have to be replaced, at a cost of thousands of dollars – out of his own pocket.

Then he had to figure out how to wash the instrument, a prospect that gave him agitation. “Water is normally the enemy of a piano,” he said. “Should not wash one! “But there was no choice.

Salt deposits had to be removed using a special cleanser. During the fall of 2011, the Endo family worked hard at the restoration.

“I didn’t trust him,” he said. “We never tried to repair a piano destroyed by the tsunami.”

“A ray of hope”

But as their restoration spread carefully, the weight of expectations increased. After all, it was still 2011, and the country was deeply traumatized. A Tokyo television network, TBS, told Endo that they wanted what was dubbed the “Wonder Piano” to appear on their Christmas Eve show, so the team ran to finish.

“People needed a ray of hope,” the piano technician said.

Endo can’t say if it sounds the same as before, but the musicians praised the soft and soft quality of the piano and its “warm” keyboard. Over the past decade, Toyoma’s piano has traveled to dozens of cities, been sung by pop stars as well as schoolchildren, and heard as far as Taiwan and Singapore.

In a key aspect, the instrument remains undeveloped: the scratches caused by the tsunami and the tears that affect the otherwise glossy onyx finish of the piano have been deliberately left untouched – scars that move the spectators to tears.

“A lot of people touched the piano and they said, ‘Endo-san, you worked hard on the restoration, but this piano – he really went through a lot, and endured. ‘”

Looking around his small piano shop, proof that his 40-year career has made them whole again, the 62-year-old restaurateur seems to have a soft spot for sick instruments.

But in this case, the piano was almost close to the point. Endo was even trying to fix broken hearts.

“The students had lost everything. Their school had disappeared, their relatives had died or were injured. The children were much more deeply affected by the emotional disaster than the adults,” he told CSB News. “We wanted to show them, ‘Look! I fixed! “Despite all the tragedy, there was one small thing that I normalized again. ”