YAMAMOTO: Hundreds of the 19,000 people killed by Japan's horrific quake-tsunami remain unmourned, their bodies never claimed because there is no one left to notice they have gone.
But one Buddhist monk has lovingly stored the ashes and bones of some of those whose names no one knows in the hope that one day they can be reunited with their families.
Every day for the last year, Ryushin Miyabe has offered prayers and lit incense for the souls in his care at the Myokoin temple in Yamamoto, a small town on Japan's tsunami-wrecked coast.
In late January he was finally able to hand over the remains of a five-year-old boy, known until then only as "No. 906", when the child's grandmother was identified through DNA tests.
The young corpse had been cremated in June after coastguards found it floating in the Pacific without any belongings, washed out to sea by the tsunami of March 11 that tore into the coast.
The grandmother told Miyabe that the boy's mother had also been killed in the catastrophe and she had been searching for her grandson's body for nearly a year.
With the boy's remains back with a family member, his spirit can pass into the next world, says Miyabe.
"I guess the boy has met his mother in heaven by now," he said. "She must have told him: 'Hey, you are late!'"
Buddhist tradition dictates that a body is cremated and the ashes are placed in an urn, along with the bones that remain.
The urn is put in a family grave, which Japanese traditionally believe to be the gateway to the next world, one through which souls can return every year during the summer festival of Obon.
The grave must be cared for by surviving family, who in return, expect spiritual protection from their deceased relatives.
Nationwide, 500 bodies recovered after the huge waves swept ashore have still not been identified, and more than 3,000 of those who died have never been found.
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