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N is a pimp-turned-activist. A jolly, convivial person by nature, he developed a strong liking for partying in high school. Years of debauchery got him thinking that he could and should make money out of it, and N started dipping his toes in Tokyo’s prostitution business for a few months. He was a mere broker with no influential contacts until one day, one of Tokyo’s more powerful yakuzas (gangster) recruited N for the simple reason that he was punctual, a quality that is rarely found in a business run by misfits in a capitalist society. N’s job title was “manager” and his workplace the yakuza’s brothel, and accordingly his job description included more than just connecting prostitutes with clients. He was entrusted with the task of hiring and training new prostitutes, which involved teaching young rookies how to teasingly undress themselves and rouse the clients (for which he himself graciously played the role of the client), screening less-motivated job applicants by making them perform perverted sexual acts, and most importantly, encouraging these fresh recruits to consider their work as a necessary step to a promising career and not as a job they only reluctantly take for easy money.

By the time N spent a year in the business and trained countless women into dedicated prostitutes, the Great Tohoku Earthquake as it is known wrecked eastern Japan. N became curious what a post-tsunami wreckage looked like, and he traveled to Kesennuma at whim to see for himself. It turned out to be a life-changing experience. After witnessing how the disaster turned an entire city into a massive graveyard, N realized that his life’s mission was not only to aid in Kesennuma’s reconstruction, but also to transform it into a place that would be forever resilient from any future natural disaster. Since his first visit to Kesennuma, N has organized a nationwide volunteer network and attracted more than 8,000 sympathetic souls to this city in less than two years (a feat for which his managerial skills from his previous job helped immensely). Also, N is marketing Kesennuma as a city of romance, taking advantage of the fact that the Japanese word for “lover” was invented in this city. He believes that once Kesennuma replaces commercial fishing with tourism as its main industry, the economic consequences of future natural disasters would be much less devastating.

N says that before Kesennuma, he was a scum with no clear purpose in life. Now he is a responsible, dedicated, and charming member of the city of Kesennuma, whom local residents and visiting volunteers cherish alike. The only vestiges of his old self are the pain in his heart caused by years of irresponsible drinking and the stack of porn magazines hidden in his closet.