Bright lights for the clear sea / Island hit by volcano 10 years ago draws woman to start new life

Tomoko Koizumi / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Keiko Sugimoto, right, and her father work as a team to gather tengusa seaweed off Miyakejima island.

Six years ago, Keiko Sugimoto traded a life in the big city for a chance to gather seaweed on a remote island, and she couldn't be happier. The former member of the corporate world now spends her days on the ocean working with her father in the sea off Miyakejima island.

The isolated community is still trying to get back on its feet after a volcanic eruption in 2000. One of the Izu Islands officially part of the Tokyo metropolis, the island on Thursday marked 10 years since residents evacuated due to the volcano. Although people began returning to the island in February 2005, the local fishing grounds are still recovering from ashfalls and mudslides, and tourism and agriculture are still affected by bursts of volcanic gas.

One day recently, Sugimoto, 38, who lives near the sea in the Kamitsuki district on the northern part of the island, was free diving to gather tengusa seaweed.

"I got a lot this time," she said with a smile to her father, Norihiro Asanuma, 72, who was waiting on the boat for his daughter to come up for air. "You're learning quickly," Asanuma said of her harvest, which was spilling out of her hands.

Asanuma, a native of the island, serves on the Miyakemura village assembly, but spent his career on freighters as a radio operator until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 55.

Before joining her father on the island after the evacuation advisory was lifted, Sugimoto lived in Saitama Prefecture with her mother and sisters, only making short visits to the island during summer holidays.

Her grandmother once told her that her father had harvested tengusa to earn his school tuition. Since his family was not wealthy, he worked summers to put himself through junior college. Sugimoto was surprised at the story about her father, who was rarely home and spoke little when he was.

On trips to the island, Sugimoto gradually fell in love with the ocean. She began scuba diving about 15 years ago and eventually traveled to the island almost every weekend to teach diving to tourists.

In the meantime, Asanuma retired and returned to live on the island alone. When the volcano erupted, he took refuge at his family's home in Saitama Prefecture.

Around that time, Sugimoto was in poor health because of overwork. She had been extremely stressed, partly over frustration that she could not visit the ocean as often as she would like, and was even hospitalized several times.

In 2004 she quit her job in Tokyo and the next year she joined her parents when they decided to move to the island. Once she was surrounded by her beloved ocean, her health began to improve.

Sugimoto started by gathering ear shells and turban shells on her father's boat. In June 2005, she asked him to teach her to harvest tengusa. Although an experienced scuba diver, she felt like an amateur diving with only a snorkel.

Unlike the placid areas tourists normally dive, tengusa grows on rocks where the water is rough and it is difficult to move around. Soon after Sugimoto began learning from her father, she was smashed against a rock by a wave and broke her hip. Determined to keep learning, she resumed training in late July.

"I thought I'd pick it up quickly, but it's actually pretty difficult," she said. "I'm not as good as my father, but I'm trying to catch up."

Tengusa seaweed, an ingredient in several kinds of gelatin used for cooking, is one of the island's main products. Although residents have returned and are trying to revive the marine products industry, production was devastated by the volcano and long evacuation period. According to the Tokyo metropolitan government, the amount of tengusa gathered fell from 300 tons in 1999 to 18 tons in 2008.

One of those bringing life back to the island, Sugimoto harvests tengusa on her father's boat almost every day.

"I want to work with my father for as long as possible," she said. "I hope more people of my generation will come to the island to help revitalize it."