Snow crunches beneath his boots as chef Toshiya Ikehata’s weary eyes peer through the backdoor into the kitchen, where custard-filled ramekins lay broken on the floor and metal racks are toppled over. He lets out a deep sigh, his breath visible in the frigid air, as he stands under frozen persimmons dangling from thin branches.
Outside of his restaurant in Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, it’s eerily silent. He is surrounded by leveled buildings, blocks of abandoned homes and the charred rubble of the central morning market, a once lively corner of the city now partially in ruin.
It’s six days after the quake, but Ikehata has lost his sense of time.
“What day is it even?" he asks with a light chuckle.
Somehow, he says, it feels like the disaster struck long ago.
But it was 4:10 p.m. on Jan. 1 when the ground began to shake. The 7.6 magnitude quake leveled buildings, devastating large swaths of Ishikawa’s Noto Peninsula.
In Wajima, which was among the worst-hit areas, the 44-year-old chef runs L’Atelier de Noto, a Michelin-starred restaurant specializing in French cuisine that makes use of local ingredients.
After the quake, Ikehata sprang into action. Backed by a network of chefs and volunteers, he has been focusing all of his energy on supporting people in his community by planning and preparing meals.
Like many from the disaster area, Ikehata’s story is one of pain, loss and uncertainty. But it’s also one of survival, hope and the bonds that connect people.
While the Wajima native does hold out hope, any return to normal life remains far off. The evacuees are very much in need of basic necessities, and the city is still a maze of mangled streets and structures.
Surveying the damage at his restaurant, Ikehata says he’s grown used to the destruction. He then turns and points toward a spot in the neighborhood, not too far away.
Squinting, he recounts that an elderly woman had been trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building. A monk joined Ikehata as they tried to pull her out. But the building continued to shake, and they had to flee.
“I didn’t know her,” he says, stepping over shattered glass that lines the streets. “But I still remember how it hurt to leave her there."
“She died right there.”
Purpose and resolve
Across the Noto Peninsula, the disaster threw life into chaos. While some buildings remained standing, water and power were cut off across wide areas, forcing residents to find somewhere safe to stay.
Ikehata, whose children fled to Osaka, ended up sleeping in his car, shifting his focus to helping feed evacuees.
He recalls the first time he ran a soup kitchen at a local evacuation center, two days after the quake.
Until then, evacuees had only been given one cold rice ball each, and as he stirred a pot of soup, an elderly man asked if it was OK to eat. Tears streamed down the man’s face when Ikehata assured him it was fine.
That moment stayed with him, and he knew he needed to continue the work. As a chef, he says, this felt like his mission.
While his life has been upended, Ikehata says it hasn't changed who he is.
“I believe this is where I’ll be for a while,” he says, glancing at the building near the port in Wajima where he and his team formed their own community kitchen.
Ikehata and his team occupy a traditional one-story building that belongs to the city of Wajima. They set up operations there at a time when the local government seemed to be overwhelmed.
“We’ll likely get in trouble later,” he says. "Time was running out, and we had to act."
Colleagues from restaurants in the area banded together, raiding their refrigerators and freezers in a shared moment of understanding that this was the clearest way to help.
“We took everything out and just started cooking,” he says.
‘I need you to find this man’
A thud resounds as the wooden sliding door is slammed shut to keep the warmth inside and the harsh cold out. Inside the kitchen, steam rises from a large metal bowl filled with flavored rice as volunteers gather around to make rice balls, while others prepare soup, season meat and organize donated supplies.
Amid the whirlwind of activity, Mollie Moore, a fellow chef and a culinary operations manager for the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, fires off a series of questions as she seamlessly navigates the space — “Where are these plums going?” “What are these eggs for?” “What else do you need?”
Along with a team from the nonprofit, which is based in the U.S, she had rushed to Ishikawa as part of the group’s mission to feed victims in disaster-stricken areas. Having learned about Ikehata's relief efforts through Instagram, she tried reaching out, but he missed her message, eventually getting in touch via a Japan-based friend.
“I told my colleagues, 'I need you to find this man,’” she says. “He's cooking. He's doing what we want to be doing. So let's go support him."
After loading trucks with nonperishable goods in Kanazawa, the team drove to Wajima with the goal of getting people hot meals as quickly as possible.
Preparing to chop a batch of onions, Moore emphasizes her team's supportive role. The locals know their food, she says; her group is there to make sure things run as smoothly as possible.
“Let’s double that,” she says, hearing that Ikehata’s team had planned to make 400 meals that day. The group aims to help relief teams stay organized and show them how to cook more meals than they thought they could.
Many don’t realize what they can do until they try, she adds, noting that 500 meals can easily turn into 2,000 if the right steps are taken.
“During times of a disaster, the community really comes together,” she says. “This really is a prime example.”
Kitchen camaraderie
Swaying along to the faint sound of music playing over the radio, chef Meiju Hirata joins in lively chatter — punctuated by moments of quiet focus — echoing through the kitchen in Wajima.
Hirata recalls that he was initially nervous during such preparations for annual culinary events in the years before the disaster. But fueled by the camaraderie he shared with Ikehata, his friend and mentor, he was able to feel at ease, and the events left a lasting impact on him.
At Villa della Pace, the high-end Italian restaurant Hirata runs in the Ishikawa city of Nanao, the 38-year-old looks at footage of the damage in Wajima for the first time, seeing the impassable roads and rows of flattened buildings. He also gets a look at Ikehata’s restaurant, where the second floor has caved into the first, and debris has spilled into the traditional inner garden.
Hirata covers his mouth in disbelief.
“With it in that state, I can’t imagine what I’d feel once I actually set foot there again,” he says.
On the day of the quake, Ikehata called Hirata, who had been in Tokyo for work. He urged him to stay out of the disaster zone, but Hirata decided to return to Nanao the following day.
Hirata — who moved from Tokyo eight years ago but says Nanao feels more like his real home — wants to do what he can for the people here.
Speaking about a week after the earthquake, Hirata says he is focusing on operating a meal system at the evacuation center set up at Nakajima Elementary School in Nanao. His goal is to make sure the site will function smoothly even if he leaves to reopen his restaurant.
But essential food supplies that ideally would be provided by the city are not reaching the center, he says, so he’s trying to set up a system, along with other local chefs, that at least offers breakfast and dinner. The effort also involves around 20 restaurants from a Hokuriku region chef group, whose members exchange information and help each other.
That group includes Ikehata, who has known Hirata since before he moved from Tokyo. Hirata says Ikehata is like an older brother to him — someone who has always taken care of him and helped him grow. Without that close relationship, Hirata says he wouldn’t have been able to open his restaurant.
Overcoming guilt
Hirata nods, deep in thought, as he looks out of his kitchen window, where snow covers the shoreline that expands into a panorama overlooking the serene Nanao Bay. He says this spot partway up the Noto Peninsula is his favorite place in the world. When he discovered it, he felt a sense of fate, as if this was where he was meant to be.
“It was the first time I ever felt like that in my life,” says Hirata, who had his home built next door to the restaurant. “Like something just made sense.”
Villa della Pace, which has also been awarded a Michelin star, was left largely unscathed by the quake, aside from some minor cracks in the walls and more than 100 broken wine bottles in the cellar. The kitchen equipment was undamaged, and the power stayed on. Ikehata encouraged Hirata to start operations again, but the main challenge has been the lack of running water.
Hirata recalls asking Ikehata, during one of their frequent calls after the quake, if there was anything he could do for him. The message was clear: Try to reopen, because if the people who can don’t, no one else will have the strength to do so later on.
Hirata agrees, believing that being one of the first to reopen could bring hope to the evacuees and volunteers.
But he has also been forced to confront feelings of guilt, brought on by hearing about the hardships people were experiencing from the quake while his own place was spared. His thoughts went as far as feeling that if his home or restaurant had suffered more damage, he might feel that he was on the same footing as everyone else.
Ikehata’s support changed all that. His longtime friend told him simply that it was better for everyone if he kept going.
“He’s given me strength,” Hirata says.
Thanks in part to that support, he does intend to push ahead — with a few changes.
For the time being, he envisions moving away from ¥18,000 courses, expecting that volunteers not only from the local community but also from outside the prefecture will visit. The shift he imagines involves creating a laid-back dining spot, where people can enjoy some coffee and a relaxed meal.
“There’s a lot of pain experienced by the people here,” he says. “But I want to instill a feeling of hope through food.”
Dreams on hold
In the mountains of Notocho, not far from Wajima, where wild vegetables thrive in the spring and champignon mushrooms emerge in the autumn, Ikehata dreamed of opening another restaurant, on the very land where he is raising his own cattle.
After nearly a decade operating L’Atelier de Noto, which drew visitors from around the globe and was consistently fully booked, Ikehata says his vision had begun to expand. It unfolded into an expansive narrative that embraced the mountainous terrain, embodying the essence of satoyama, a Japanese term that conjures images of the harmony between nature and humanity.
But the disaster put those dreams on hold, with Ikehata’s focus shifting to the survival of his town and the preservation of its culture. He's looking ahead to a time when Wajima will be able to welcome visitors again.
In the meantime, he will work to rebuild the city’s restaurant scene by supporting those who have long been part of the local community — the farmers that provide chefs with ingredients, as well as the members of his soup kitchen, some of whom are the owners of nearby eateries that were destroyed. Part of the plan involves creating food stalls, where chefs can serve meals making use of local ingredients.
But the path to recovery won’t be easy, as the community confronts a host of challenges — both practical and emotional.
That’s true for Ikehata as well, who recalls crying when he first saw the state of his restaurant.
The tears stopped when he realized he had so much to do to support his community, his friends and his city.
“Even after all this,” he says, “I intend to stay.”