A story of resilience and recovery taken over many years in the photographer's hometown of Kobe. In 1996, the year after the disastrous earthquake had hit the region and caused destruction and death, the cherry blossoms still bloomed, offering a brief respite and encouragement. Created between 1991 and 2005, Masahiro Kawatei's photographs tell of what has been lost, of pain and despair, but also of hope, happiness and new life emerging from destruction. In the afterword Kawatei writes that he could do nothing but keep shooting, and then encountered a view of cherry blossoms blooming amid the rubble: the town of his boyhood, born out of postwar rehabilitation, was lost forever, replaced by homogenized subdivisions, a real physical experience of how towns are the repeated cycle of destruction and renewal. All text is in Japanese and English.