World Cup revives Japan’s tsunami-hit ‘Rugby town’

KAMAISHI: -When the Rugby World Cup comes to the small northern Japanese town of Kamaishi in just over a year, it will stir emotions far beyond the pitch.

This former mining town with a proud rugby tradition was one of the areas hardest-hit by the 2011 tsunami, losing more than 1,000 people and suffering widespread devastation. Rising from the wreckage is the Rugby World Cup’s only purpose-built stadium, a 6,000-seater venue unveiled Sunday that locals see as a powerful and defiant symbol of hope, resilience and recovery.

Sometimes dubbed Japan’s "rugby town" or the "Wales of Japan" for its mining and rugby links, the town of 34,000 people turned to the oval ball to pull the community together after the disaster. In the early 1980s the local club, Nippon Steel Kamaishi RFC, carried all before them -- winning seven consecutive national titles and earning the nickname "the Northern Iron Men".

This team disbanded but in its place came the Kamaishi Seawaves. Locals rallied round the club and urged them to return to the pitch as soon as possible after the March 11, 2011 tsunami. Former Seawaves scrum-half Takeshi Nagata said winning the right to host two World Cup games would enable the town to repay the support it received from abroad and show it has risen from the wreckage.

"At the time of the disaster, we had such a huge amount of support from outside and from overseas. So we are really keen to show everyone that we are doing well and we have recovered," said the 35-year-old. Memories of the tsunami are never far from sight, even at the brand-new Kamaishi Unosumai Memorial Stadium.

Just a few hundred metres from the goalposts, workers are reconstructing sea defences and two new evacuation routes snake into the hills just beyond one try line. Reminders of the carnage suffered by this town are everywhere, from road signs declaring where the waters reached to a poignant memorial with an inscription: "Just run. Run uphill ... And tell future generations that a tsunami reached this point."