TOKYO – Japan's emperor made his first visit Thursday to the disaster zone devastated by an earthquake and tsunami, kneeling on mats to commiserate with survivors who bowed in gratitude and wiped away tears.

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited two evacuation shelters Thursday in Asahi city, where they spoke quietly with evacuees sitting on mats in the community centers that have become their temporary homes.

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Asahi, about 86 kilometers (54 miles) east of Tokyo near the Pacific coast, is one of the southernmost areas to be heavily affected by the March 11 natural disasters, which killed up to 26,000 people and also set off a crisis of radiation leaks at a flooded nuclear plant.

One evacuee with Down syndrome, who has trouble speaking, conveyed his thoughts to the royal couple on paper. "I will keep striving," he wrote in a small notebook that he showed to the emperor and empress.

In Asahi, where some 3,000 homes were damaged or destroyed and 13 people killed, the royal couple stood somberly gazing at one damaged area that had already been cleared of rubble.

Overall, nearly 140,000 people are still living in shelters after losing their homes or being advised to evacuate because of concerns about radiation leaking from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

Although Japanese officials have insisted the situation at the crippled plant is improving and that leaks into the atmosphere are declining, the crisis has dragged on, accompanied by a nearly nonstop series of mishaps and aftershocks of the 9.0-magnitude quake that have impeded work in clearing debris and restoring the plant's disabled cooling systems.

The setbacks are angering and frustrating residents whose lives have been derailed by the crisis.

"I'm physically and mentally worn out," said Yoshihisa Kato, a 66-year-old noodle shop owner in the town of Kawamata, which is about 28 miles (45 kilometers) northwest of the plant and in an area where officials have urged people to evacuate over radiation concerns.

"I've been going to funerals almost everyday because many elderly people in my neighborhood have died due to shocks and exhaustion," said Kato, whose business has dried up as residents have fled the area.

Japan acknowledged this week that overall leaked radioactivity already has catapulted the crisis into the highest severity on an international scale, on a par with Chernobyl, though still involving only a tenth of the radioactivity emitted in that 1986 disaster.