Message for those affected by the Tohoku Pacific Earthquake and Tsunami

I would like to express my heartfelt concern and sympathy for everyone confronting the effects of the Tohoku Pacific Earthquake and Tsunami.

This cataclysmic event has occurred just as we in the nonprofit Initiative for Tomorrow’s Opportunities in Architecture are preparing to launch a school that we hope will embody the very name of our organization. Hearing from colleagues at universities in the Tohoku region about conditions following the earthquake and tsunami, we can only dimly imagine the terrible depths of this catastrophe. Even so, we want to be of some kind of assistance - we feel there must be something we can do for those in the affected areas. 

The primary reason for establishing our own school of architecture was the desire to reevaluate the question, “Exactly for who and for what purpose do architects make architecture?” We cannot help but feel that this almost unimaginably fundamental issue for those who think about architecture has become completely overlooked by established and aspiring architects alike. Almost to the point of exhaustion, we have called for an architecture that is made for people, and communities. Nor should these be overly abstracted or schematized people and communities, but actual, living and breathing human beings.

However, when we face those whose lives have been disrupted by the current disaster, we cannot approach them as architects and must approach them as individuals. Neither communities of autonomous egos that exist only in concept nor theories of collectivism have any use here. The only concern is how I, as a person, can help you, as a person - one to another. It is for this reason that we hope that even though it is not charity, the thinking behind this architecture school can be of assistance, if only at a small scale.

Upon launching the school’s Architect Development Program course for emerging architects, we plan to first take our students to visit the Tohoku region to hear in person the experiences of the people there, and to also have architects from Tohoku come to Tokyo to speak with us directly, in order to discuss ways that we can be of assistance. During summer holidays we hope to invite primary school children from the affected areas to visit our museum in Imabari on the island of Omishima in the Seto Inland Sea, where they can interact with their local peers and we can exchange ideas about urban communities together. Further, we are considering revising our originally planned curriculum to address issues related to the disaster. 

We sincerely hope that even as a small, private organization, our school can provide a foothold for supporting the restoration process.

Toyo Ito
March 28, 2011

(via ART iT)

The following text was originally published in Japanese on March 28 on the ITO School website, and is reproduced here in English with permission of Toyo Ito and ITO School.

I  SET out from my home in the port city of Yokohama early in the afternoon last Friday, and shortly before 3 p.m. I checked into my hotel in the Shinjuku neighborhood of Tokyo. I usually spend three or four days a week there to write, gather material and take care of other business.

The earthquake hit just as I entered my room. Thinking I might end up trapped beneath rubble, I grabbed a container of water, a carton of cookies and a bottle of brandy and dived beneath the sturdily built writing desk. Now that I think about it, I don’t suppose there would have been time to savor a last taste of brandy if the 30-story hotel had fallen down around me. But taking even this much of a countermeasure kept sheer panic at bay.

Before long an emergency announcement came over the P.A. system: “This hotel is constructed to be absolutely earthquake-proof. There is no danger of the building collapsing. Please do not attempt to leave the hotel.” This was repeated several times. At first I wondered if it was true. Wasn’t the management merely trying to keep people calm?

And it was then that, without really thinking about it, I adopted my fundamental stance toward this disaster: For the present, at least, I would trust the words of people and organizations with better information and more knowledge of the situation than I. I decided to believe the building wouldn’t fall. And it didn’t.

The Japanese are often said to abide faithfully by the rules of the “group” and to be adept at forming cooperative systems in the face of great adversity. That would be hard to deny today. Valiant rescue and relief efforts continue nonstop, and no looting has been reported.

Away from the eyes of the group, however, we also have a tendency to behave egoistically — almost as if in rebellion. And we are experiencing that too: Necessities like rice and water and bread have disappeared from supermarkets and convenience stores. Gas stations are out of fuel. There is panic buying and hoarding. Loyalty to the group is being tested.

At present, though, our greatest concern is the crisis at the nuclear reactors in Fukushima. There is a mass of confused and conflicting information. Some say the situation is worse than Three Mile Island, but not as bad as Chernobyl; others say that winds carrying radioactive iodine are headed for Tokyo, and that everyone should remain indoors and eat lots of kelp, which contains plenty of safe iodine, which helps prevent the absorbtion of the radioactive element. An American friend advised me to flee to western Japan.

Some people are leaving Tokyo, but most remain. “I have to work,” some say. “I have my friends here, and my pets.” Others reason, “Even if it becomes a Chernobyl-class catastrophe, Fukushima is 170 miles from Tokyo.”

My parents are in western Japan, in Kyushu, but I don’t plan to flee there. I want to remain here, side by side with my family and friends and all the victims of the disaster. I want to somehow lend them courage, just as they are lending courage to me.

And, for now, I want to continue the stance I took in my hotel room: I will trust the words of better-informed people and organizations, especially scientists, doctors and engineers whom I read online. Their opinions and judgments do not receive wide news coverage. But the information is objective and accurate, and I trust it more than anything else I hear.

Ten years ago I wrote a novel in which a middle-school student, delivering a speech before Parliament, says: “This country has everything. You can find whatever you want here. The only thing you can’t find is hope.”

One might say the opposite today: evacuation centers are facing serious shortages of food, water and medicine; there are shortages of goods and power in the Tokyo area as well. Our way of life is threatened, and the government and utility companies have not responded adequately.

But for all we’ve lost, hope is in fact one thing we Japanese have regained. The great earthquake and tsunami have robbed us of many lives and resources. But we who were so intoxicated with our own prosperity have once again planted the seed of hope. So I choose to believe.

__________

Ryu Murakami is the author of “Popular Hits of the Showa Era.” This article was translated by Ralph F. McCarthy from the Japanese.

Published: March 16, 2011

(Via nytimes.com)

A week has passed since the devastating Tohoku Pacific Earthquake and Tsunami that struck northeastern Japan March 11. With the ensuing nuclear crisis at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, these events have taken a great human, economic and spiritual toll from Japan - a toll that is still as yet incalculable, and may remain so for the foreseeable future. Yet as has been made evident through both news coverage and personal daily interactions, even a catastrophe of such wide-reaching and unprecedented impact has not shaken the fundamental humanity of the many affected people. We have received and sent numerous contacts from and to friends and colleagues in our broader professional community, and take strength from the many expressions of composure and sympathy that have been exchanged in these trying days. While this will certainly be recorded as one of the worst disasters in the recent history of Japan, it also has the potential to be remembered as a triumph of dignity, compassion and spontaneous collective resolve. We at ART iT are discussing ways in which we can use our media platform to contribute to recovery efforts, including but not limited to the raising of money and other resources for charity. And while it is easy to question its significance in a time of crisis, we feel that continuing to think critically about art and its associated issues is no less a contribution to working beyond the circumscribed perspective of self-preservation. It is for this reason that we plan to proceed - to the best of our abilities - with already scheduled thematic and timely content, while also reporting on the responses of artists, architects and other creatives to the effects of the disaster.

We extend our most profound sympathies to those whose loved ones and homes were lost in the earthquake and tsunami, and thank our local and international readers for their continued support and understanding.

18 March, 2011

- The Editors / ART iT

Le prix Nobel de littérature Kenzaburô Oé estime que le Japon se retrouve de nouveau “sous le regard des victimes du nucléaire” et que l’histoire de son pays entre “dans une nouvelle phase” avec la menace de la centrale de Fukushima, dans un entretien au Monde daté de jeudi.

“Quelle que soit l’issue du désastre, sa signification ne prête à aucune ambiguïté : l’histoire du Japon est entrée dans une nouvelle phase et, une fois de plus, nous sommes sous le regard des victimes du nucléaire, de ces hommes et de ces femmes qui ont fait preuve de grand courage dans leur souffrance”, souligne l’écrivain de 76 ans.

L’enseignement que l’on pourra en tirer “dépendra de la ferme résolution de ceux auxquels il est accordé de vivre de ne pas répéter les mêmes errements”, relève-t-il.

“Je caresse depuis longtemps le projet de retracer l’histoire contemporaine du Japon en prenant comme référence (…) les morts des bombardements d’Hiroshima et Nagasaki, les irradiés de Bikini et les victimes des explosions dans des installations nucléaires”, poursuit le prix Nobel 1994, grand humaniste et conscience du Japon.

Les Japonais, “qui ont fait l’expérience du feu atomique, ne doivent pas penser l’énergie nucléaire en termes de productivité industrielle”, estime Kenzaburô Oé.

“Il faut graver l’expérience d’Hiroshima dans la mémoire de l’humanité : c’est une catastrophe encore plus dramatique que les désastres naturels car elle est due à la main de l’homme”, ajoute-t-il.

“Récidiver, en faisant preuve avec les centrales nucléaires de la même inconséquence à l’égard de la vie humaine, c’est là la pire trahison de la mémoire des victimes d’Hiroshima”, déplore l’auteur.

Confiant écrire un “dernier roman”, il conclut “si je réussis à survivre à cette folie actuelle, le livre que j’achèverai commencera avec une citation de la fin de L’Enfer de Dante qui dit à peu près : +Et puis nous sortirons pour revoir les étoiles+”.

cha/jca/hj

(AFP | 16.03.11 | 17h27 | via lemonde.fr )