Aiming to Build New Communities in Earthquake-Stricken Areas: Ishinomaki Jichiren's Initiatives

JFS Newsletter No.179 (July 2017)

Copyright The Third Stage All Rights Reserved.

Six years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. The interest in and support to areas in Tohoku Region that were heavily damaged by the earthquake are said to be gradually dying down. Part of the reason is that the Kumamoto earthquakes last year also caused great damage. Yet, despite the passage of time, the Tohoku disaster areas have yet to recover.

Early in July, we visited Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, for a direct view of the current situation and efforts six years after the earthquake. Ishinomaki, with an area of 555 square kilometers, has the second largest population in Miyagi Prefecture, next to Sendai. The Port of Ishinomaki, one of the best fishing ports in the Orient, lends the city an air of vigor with many sightseeing spots, and also provides it an active role in agriculture.

On March 11, 2011, a great earthquake with a seismic intensity of over 6 on the Japanese scale of 7 hit Ishinomaki, with a subsequent tsunami, reaching over 10 meters in height in some places. More than 3,200 deaths were directly attributable to the earthquake and tsunami, rising to more than 3,550 when other disaster-related deaths are included. More than 420 people are still missing. More than 20,000 houses or buildings were completely destroyed, with more than 13,000 half-destroyed and more than 23,000 partly destroyed. Extensive areas of the city were flooded by the tsunami. Archives have been released with many photographs documenting the disaster to record the state of disaster and progress toward recovery in Ishinomaki. (Follow the website link below.)
http://www.city.ishinomaki.lg.jp/cont/10151000/1501/24-31.pdf (Japan! ese only)

The disaster victims initially stayed in shelters set up at elementary and junior high schools, temples and other facilities open to the public. After that, some, such as those who had lost their homes, moved into temporary homes built in various parts in the city. Previously, when we visited some of the temporary housing complexes, many were single-story prefabricated buildings, which gave the residents many opportunities to meet each other, and since many volunteers often visited, it seemed to us that a sense of community had been established at many of the temporary housing complexes.

However, now that several years have passed since the earthquake and the number of people moving out of the temporary housing complexes is increasing, closing and consolidation of temporary housing is underway and post-disaster public housing, where disaster victims can live long term, is being built across the city. Post-disaster public housing is public rental housing for those who have lost their houses due to the disaster and cannot rebuild their houses by themselves.

The temporary housing complexes were single-story, providing a sense of proximity among the residents, while post-disaster housing consists mostly of two-story, three-story or four-story reinforced-concrete apartment complexes. Some of them are even ten-story buildings like high-rise condominiums. Although there are assembly rooms and other gathering places in such apartment complexes, chances to connect and interact with other residents are lost once the iron front doors to their apartments are closed. Furthermore, since disaster victims are moving into post-disaster housing from different areas, they lack past connections and shared history in the areas where they lived before the earthquake.

In this context, we visited Ishinomaki Jichiren, a general incorporated association (legally-registered society in Japan) that is making efforts to build resident communities in post-disaster housing. There we interviewed Kei Masuda, the association's chairman, and Toru Utsumi, its secretary-general. In this issue of the JFS Newsletter, we introduce our interview with these two people.

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Bringing Shared Visions to Community Reconstruction

Copyright 2017 Emiko Yoshida All Rights Reserved.

The JKSK Yui-Yui Project, an initiative to support people in Japan affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, has been publishing a series of articles on reconstruction efforts called the Tohoku Reconstruction Diary in the Tokyo Shimbun Newspaper. Below, we present an article published on November 15, 2016, about an initiative to bring shared visions to community reconstruction.

After the Great East Japan Earthquake, more people everywhere have become interested in energy and food, and in particular, how and where they are made and how they are brought to us. At the same time, concerns about community have been increasing, too, because people are more keenly aware that the connections between person and person, person and community, and person and nature were interrupted by the disaster. Some areas have lost these connections, as did Fukushima.

In light of such circumstances, more people share various visions, including the following:

• Producing renewable energy and food by ourselves
• Interacting with farming and mountain villages and obtaining traceable energy and agricultural products
• Building relationships of trust with production areas and farmers, aiming to realize a sustainable society

The Iwaki Otento SUN project is an example project being developed primarily in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture. To restore agricultural land abandoned after the earthquake and the nuclear accident, the project supports regional revitalization through the development of organic cotton products, and is also developing an electricity initiative for producing and supplying renewable energy. Up to now, these community-led projects have seen participation by more than 15,000 volunteers from the Tokyo metropolitan area and students from local elementary and junior high schools.

The electricity initiative has been running smoothly since operation began in May 2013 of the approximately 50 kilowatt solar power generation facility installed in Iwaki. The electricity is sold to like-minded PAL System Power (located in Tokyo). Recently, the initiative has even expanded abroad, and solar panels made by hand by children in Fukushima have been delivered to areas lacking access to electricity in Nepal, the Philippines, and Micronesia as "Lights of Hope."

Junko Owada
Member of JKSK
Co-CEO, LOHAS Business Alliance