[Feature: 10 Years Since 3.11] Roundtable Discussion: Thinking About a Resilient Society from Earthquake Reconstruction

Thank you all for gathering here today. This March marks 10 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake. During the year of the disaster, I was studying abroad and watching the situation in the disaster areas on television from Canada. I contacted the university immediately, but I didn't receive a response from anyone even after two days.

I returned to Japan in the summer and wanted to get involved in the reconstruction right away. Given the Fukushima nuclear accident at the time, I wondered if I could contribute through renewable energy, so I dove into Kesennuma. Over these 10 years, I have continued my relationship with Kesennuma in various ways, and Mr. Sugawara has been a great help to me.

First, I would like to ask everyone to briefly introduce themselves and describe how they have been involved in the reconstruction.

My main business is serving as the president of a sake brewery called Otokoyama Honten in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture. Even before the disaster, I was promoting the slow food movement in Kesennuma. At the time of the earthquake, I was the vice-chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, so I became a member of the Kesennuma City Reconstruction Plan Committee. Meetings began in June, and by September, I was working alongside the mayor and others on the formidable task of creating a reconstruction plan.

Following that, as part of the reconstruction, I was involved in the reconstruction and community development of the Inner Bay area of Kesennuma City—an area at the very back of the port with the sea right in front of it—and served as its representative. Since becoming the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 2013, I have also been involved in regional industrial promotion. Recently, I have had my hands full with economic measures for the COVID-19 pandemic.

My relationship with Professor Yan began when we established an organization called the "Kesennuma City Livability Creation Organization," where I also serve as the representative.

Mr. Fukusako, could you go next?

I work at Higashi Nippon International University in Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture. After completing my Master's in Sociology at Keio, I happened to find a position at a university in my hometown of Iwaki. Being a local, I have been involved in community development and regional revitalization in Iwaki City and Fukushima Prefecture for the past 20 years, working with local governments, chambers of commerce, and other organizations.

I experienced 3.11 ten years ago on the university campus, and since then, I have been involved in local reconstruction as an extension of regional revitalization. Over the past two fiscal years, I have also been participating as the representative for Fukushima Prefecture in an expert committee for the Reconstruction Agency's project to collect case studies and conduct research and analysis on the Great East Japan Earthquake.

Through a connection with an energy activity group, I also participated in reconstruction planning activities in a place called Ota in Minamisoma, Fukushima.

Next, Ms. Kamida, could you go?

I am currently working as an urban planning consultant, but four years ago, Professor Kobiyama invited me to teach a course titled "Urban and Architectural Resilience" in the Department of System Design Engineering at Keio's Faculty of Science and Technology.

After graduating from the Department of Architecture and working in architectural design, I changed careers to become an urban planning consultant. I was involved in examining the state of reconstruction housing after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and working to make densely populated urban areas disaster-resilient. Since then, I have been involved in disaster recovery and reconstruction work for earthquakes, major fires, and heavy rain disasters.

Regarding the Great East Japan Earthquake, I was seconded to Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture, for about six years to conduct a preliminary survey of reconstruction patterns commissioned by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. I provided reconstruction support for all 33 disaster-affected districts in Miyako City. Among them, I have been deeply and continuously involved as the secretariat for the Reconstruction Community Development Council established by disaster victims in the Taro district, which is famous for its massive seawall known as the "Great Wall."

The Taro District Reconstruction Community Development Council formulated the "Taro District Reconstruction Community Development Plan" and worked toward reconstruction until the eighth year after the disaster. After that, we decided to remove the word "reconstruction" and continue our activities by formulating the "Taro District Community Development Plan," a plan focused more on the future.

Finally, Professor Kobiyama, please.

My specialty is architectural structures and earthquake engineering, and I conduct a wide range of research on disaster-preventive housing and community development.

In my laboratory, we previously worked on research related to reconstruction community development in Iwaki City, conducting interview surveys with the cooperation of the city hall, neighborhood associations, and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

At the time of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, there was an issue with elderly people living alone dying in isolation in disaster public housing. I have worked on research in Iwaki City to solve this problem. Every time the anniversary of 3.11 comes around, the issue of solitary deaths is reported in the newspapers, and I am concerned that the COVID-19 pandemic might further exacerbate this.

As Ms. Kamida mentioned, for three years starting from the 2017 fiscal year, with the support of the Tokyo Metropolitan Urban Development Public Corporation, we established an endowed chair in the Faculty of Science and Technology. We conducted classes on disaster-preventive community development and architectural design for undergraduate and graduate students and held symposiums on disaster-preventive community development for the general public.

Regarding academic society activities, Professor Izuru Takewaki of Kyoto University, who is a senior colleague of mine, is currently serving as the president of the Architectural Institute of Japan. I am also involved in promoting "resilient architecture"—buildings that can be quickly restored even if a disaster occurs.

Everyone is involved in diverse activities, and we have experts here for each of the three prefectures: Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate.

The keyword "resilience" has already come up. I feel that this word was not heard much in Japan before 3.11. Translating the word "resilience" into Japanese is very difficult. It is understood in various ways depending on the context, such as resistance or recovery power.

In Japan, I think the word "reconstruction" (fukko) first became widely used as a term that fits perfectly and has become established. I feel that progress is being measured in terms of how much restoration or reconstruction has been achieved.

First of all, over these 10 years, to what extent has reconstruction or restoration actually been achieved?

Even among the three disaster-affected prefectures, Fukushima Prefecture is often said to be special. This is, needless to say, due to the nuclear accident, but how it is special is also a difficult question.

To begin with, there are questions like "What is reconstruction?" and "How far do we have to go to say reconstruction is finished?" In Fukushima Prefecture, slogans were posted everywhere with the intent of aiming for a "reconstruction" that shines brighter than before the disaster, rather than just "recovery" to the original state. I feel this has become something of a curse.

Particularly in the Hamadori region along the Pacific coast. Iwaki City is at the southernmost tip of the Hamadori region, with Minamisoma City and Soma City to the north, and the Futaba district, where the nuclear power plant is located, in between. If you divide Hamadori into these three, the situation is extremely patchy. In the Futaba district, there are still areas where almost no residents can return.

On the other hand, Iwaki City experienced what was called a "reconstruction bubble" for a time, with the highest land price increase rate in the country, and it is said to have flourished economically. This patchwork pattern is the difficult part of reconstruction. If you look closer, there are people and companies that have become economically wealthy, while other parts are being left completely behind.

As mentioned earlier regarding disaster public housing, the scars of the earthquake certainly remain. Therefore, one cannot say sweepingly whether reconstruction has progressed or not in the 10 years since the disaster. It is progressing, but in terms of the picture beyond that, to be honest, it hasn't been drawn for Fukushima Prefecture.

It is progressing, but while the direction is unclear, there is an effort to achieve revitalization beyond just returning to the original state, which leads to the problem of over-investment. I think this is a common issue faced by many regional areas.

From an objective standpoint, in terms of the "Analysis and Case Study Collection Project," the number of cases that can be highlighted as examples for the future is inevitably smaller for Fukushima compared to Miyagi and Iwate. In the case of Fukushima, many projects have only just begun, and I think it is a difficult situation.

How about Kesennuma in Miyagi?

Regarding the earthquake damage and the subsequent reconstruction, the way each land was affected differs, so as just mentioned, the situation is likely completely different in each region.

In the case of Kesennuma, because the mountains press close to the sea, the flooded area was surprisingly small. It was about 5.6 percent of the total, yet industries were concentrated there.

Eighty percent of the businesses in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry suffered flood damage. In contrast, about 41 percent of houses were affected. Even so, that's about 9,000 households. Industries were concentrated on the flat land, and that area suffered the most damage from this tsunami. I think a characteristic of Kesennuma is that within the same region, areas hit by the tsunami and areas that remained are mixed together.

Places like Rikuzentakata and Minamisanriku were completely wiped out by the tsunami. In contrast, in Kesennuma, the areas that remained are overwhelmingly larger. This created a situation where, even if we tried to do many things at once, progress didn't happen immediately.

Ten years later, the so-called hardware-side recovery work is in its final stages, and a town like we've never seen before is being completed.

Everything is brand new and shiny.

New roads, bridges, and buildings have been built. In a sense, it's wonderful, but we also feel that it has become something completely different from the town we knew.

The remaining construction is the seawall, which I think will take a few more years. On the hardware side, something unprecedented has been built, so whether that becomes over-investment will depend on the capabilities of those of us who live there from now on.

On the other hand, in the often-mentioned "soft" or social aspects, many challenges still remain. Challenges that existed even before the disaster became prominent because of it, and then more challenges were added during the recovery and reconstruction process. I feel this will probably never end. Recovery and reconstruction have flowed directly into the trend of regional revitalization, or currently into COVID-19 responses; it feels like it has become endless.

For example, in the industrial sector, everyone has shared their wisdom and developed new ways of selling to overcome problems with sales channels for processed marine products. The labor shortage was also serious, but we have gathered ideas from various places and tried to reconstruct somehow.

In that sense, regardless of whether the speed was fast or slow, the soft aspects are also making steady, albeit gradual, progress. However, new challenges keep appearing, so it becomes necessary to respond to them each time.

I believe the "Kesennuma City Livability Creation Organization" that I am working on with Professor Yan is one model. Immediately after the disaster, people from various companies and other organizations came saying, "We want to help," but for the first three or four years after the disaster, we were too busy to accept them. We created this organization to properly receive that help and utilize it for new, sustainable community development.

Now, a flow is being created to build a livable town while gathering the expertise of various companies and scholars. I think it would be interesting if we could gather the experience, know-how, and human resources we have cultivated so far to create a new kind of community development.

Within resilience, there are two ways of looking at it: physical resilience and social resilience. Physical refers first to the conditions of the land—whether the geographical conditions of that land are fragile and susceptible to damage.

For example, in Kesennuma, I think people in the past lived on high ground to prepare for disasters, but as development progressed, industries concentrated in convenient locations, which created a fragile side that could be hit. I think this is the same for any port town across the country.

On the other hand, in the soft or social aspect, it naturally cannot be changed in a short period, so there are parts that always follow with a delay. In other words, reconstruction is often criticized for being hardware-first, but in a sense, that is unavoidable.

Professor Kobiyama, I believe you have a great deal of insight on this. What are your thoughts?

There was mention that the word resilience began to be heard after the Great East Japan Earthquake, but this was originally a term in strength of materials and is a very old word used since the 19th century.

In terms of meaning, it represents how much energy can be stored in a way that allows something like a rod to return to its original state without residual strain when force is applied. In Japanese, I think the word "shiyanayaka-sa" (suppleness/flexibility) corresponds to it quite well.

This has come to be used metaphorically in various fields such as psychology or disaster science, which I am involved in, to mean "recovering, restoring, or reconstructing to the original form."

In the field of earthquake engineering, a proposal was made in the early 2000s to incorporate the concept of resilience into seismic design. There are the "Four Rs" as means to enhance resilience: Robustness, Redundancy, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity.

Robustness refers to the strength against earthquakes that has been talked about for a long time—"sturdiness." Redundancy means having alternatives or backups ready so that functions can be maintained even if one part is damaged.

Then, Resourcefulness is a word not often heard in Japanese, but it means "adaptability." it represents the ingenuity to respond to difficulties by making good use of various resources one possesses. The final one, Rapidity, means "speediness"—that is, restoring quickly. It was proposed that resilience is a power that integrates these four.

Conventionally, at the time of a disaster, structures were designed to withstand an assumed earthquake force or tsunami inundation depth. However, in the early 2000s, it was proposed that we should aim for designs that can respond effectively and return to their original state even when a large external force or disturbance exceeding assumptions occurs.

Since then, after experiencing many actual disasters and recognizing that such things are truly necessary, the word resilience has become widespread.

I see, so that is the sequence.

In the society we live in, there is hardware such as architectural and civil engineering structures, economic activities, and connections between people. I believe there is resilience in each of these. Everyone has been working on recovery and reconstruction over these 10 years while carrying very deep emotional scars from the disaster.

Those who lost their homes first moved into temporary housing and then into housing where they would live permanently. This might be a private home or disaster public housing, but they have to work on recovery and reconstruction while changing their living environments and adapting to the changing environment each time.

In that process, how do those who have suffered deep emotional scars recover? The destruction of the environment—buildings, towns, etc.—which is an element that forms one's personality, causes enormous emotional trauma. In such times, taking the initiative to reclaim the environment in which one lives is very important for the emotional recovery of someone with deep scars.

If people feel a sense of disconnect with the brand new, never-before-seen roads, bridges, and buildings, it may be necessary to re-examine how the disaster victims were proactively involved in the process of creating them during the reconstruction process over the past 10 years.

In fact, the minds and bodies of disaster victims are connected, so proactively engaging in the creation of a new town is a very important process for regaining health. Resilience is not just about the hardware side. Research is gradually making it clear that recovery and reconstruction efforts that consider the relationship between buildings, towns, and humans are important.

That was very suggestive insight. I think the seawalls and reconstruction in the Taro district are very deeply connected to this. Ms. Kamida, you have met various people in the field; what are your thoughts?

I have worked on reconstruction together with residents in the field, and it is said that the Taro district was successful on the hardware side, even being included in the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism's case studies. It was noted that relocation to higher ground was completed earlier than planned.

However, I don't think that "performing reconstruction projects quickly" is necessarily always good. Unless we create a town where everyone wants to live, a town where there are proper jobs, and a town where the elderly can gather, interact, and maintain the neighborhood relationships they had before the disaster, no matter how fast the hardware is built, it will be a town without a soul.

In the Taro district, we created options for residential areas after reconstruction and asked each individual. We planned to relocate and raise the national highway within the urban area and create a raised urban area on the mountain side of it.

Also, for those who did not want to live in the urban area because it was scary, we were able to provide the option of relocating to higher ground by developing forest land adjacent to the northeast of the urban area. With recent technology for retaining wall installation and embankment development, it has become possible to develop collective relocation housing complexes with many units even in steep locations.

Then, we conducted surveys and individual interviews many times, asking people where they wanted to live. Many people said they wanted to leave the town altogether. Also, even when asked if they wanted to live on the high ground, that high ground was just a forest before it was built, so they didn't know what kind of town it would become. Therefore, quite a few people said they couldn't answer just by being told the land-use layout.

Even if we decide the hardware side on a drawing and say, "Everyone, please relocate," for the residents, the most important thing is what kind of life they can lead. I felt that reconstruction cannot be successfully realized unless we think about those aspects together.

Miyako City is a town of commerce, industry, and fishing, but the departments in charge of districts where fishing is active had their hands full with the hardware recovery of fishing ports because they were all destroyed, and there were aspects where industrial reconstruction fell behind.

Regarding recent events, the section in Taro was relatively late, but the Sanriku Coastal Road (Reconstruction Road), which runs through the inland area, was recently connected. However, thanks to that, the volume of traffic in the town center has plummeted. While hardware progress has been made, such as building a new roadside station along the coast for reconstruction, there are situations where this has conversely led to the decline of the region.

Hearing your story, I felt that something to bridge the gap between the hardware resilience I mentioned earlier and people's social resilience is also necessary.

Mr. Fukusako, what do you think?

In 2019, Typhoon No. 19 raged across the country, causing immense damage in Fukushima Prefecture as well. Particularly in the Nakadori region, where the Tohoku Shinkansen runs, very heavy damage occurred in the Abukuma River system, and an entire industrial park was flooded.

What was shocking was that in Iwaki City in the Hamadori region, 13 people died, including disaster-related deaths, which was the highest number of human casualties for a basic municipality in the country.

Despite being a region that suffered direct damage from the Great East Japan Earthquake within Fukushima Prefecture, Iwaki City was unable to respond to the typhoon disaster. While there are hardware aspects such as river measures, the challenge emerged that the soft aspects were even weaker. I believe this is a major issue related to resilient community development.

I served as the coordinator for the city's typhoon verification committee, and as expected, the way information was provided and the preparations for the typhoon were very weak, not only in the administration but in the region as a whole. As a result, a "normalcy bias"—the thought that "it's been fine until now, so it'll be okay"—kicked in, and some people died because they were late to evacuate.

We examined how to prevent such situations, and in terms of the soft aspects, we must use the occurrence of such disasters as an opportunity to publicize and raise awareness about daily preparation. Naturally, there were hazard maps, and since the damage was almost exactly as shown on the hazard maps, people knew the risks of the districts where they lived. However, residents were not very conscious of them.

Furthermore, it is necessary to create a network during normal times that serves as a base.

First, as an administrative system, local governments must create a system that can move when something happens, as disaster response will in a sense become routine work in the future, and make human resource allocation flexible during emergencies. Iwaki City will establish a Crisis Management Department starting next fiscal year to function as its core.

Furthermore, it is necessary to create a network between the administration and the private sector during normal times and strengthen the system so that various people and companies can get involved in times of need.

Even in companies, cooperation with the administration is progressing in creating so-called BCPs (Business Continuity Plans). I believe it is necessary to create a system where local governments and private organizations such as chambers of commerce collaborate to prepare for what actions to take immediately after a disaster occurs and as a certain amount of time passes.

Mr. Sugawara, what do you think?

I felt this strongly while running a group to study seawalls, but I don't think true peace of mind and safety can be achieved by a top-down plan that simply says, "We will build a 15-meter seawall here."

Even if a seawall is to be built, I believe a process is first needed where residents understand and accept the plan. To that end, residents must study various aspects of tsunami defense. We invited professors from universities to study what the role of a seawall is and whether there are other methods of disaster prevention.

By providing such opportunities, even if people don't necessarily agree, if they can accept it, they can pass on to their children and grandchildren the message that "this is how we reached an agreement."

If we don't do this, and are simply told from above that "it's safe," nothing will be passed on to future generations. There is a danger that after several generations, memories will fade, people will think they are fine because the seawall is there, and we will repeat the tragedy of being unable to escape.

When discussing whether to build a seawall, none of the residents right in front of us wanted a high one. Rather, they argued that building evacuation routes to quickly escape to high ground would be more effective and cost less. However, the administration did not adopt that, saying they would build a seawall because the budget was for a seawall.

We were told, "Budgets for evacuation routes are not provided for disaster recovery," and in the end, we had no choice but to go with building the seawall. If that is the case, I believe it is extremely important for residents to truly participate and build it with consensus.

Regarding the hardware aspect, I think decentralization is important. Multiple layers of defense is one example; rather than relying on a single method or object, we combine several things. It is also important to ensure that even if one facility fails, others remain usable.

On the other hand, software is a matter of awareness, so I think it is important for residents to be well-acquainted with their daily surroundings. Just knowing one specific road can completely change how you escape. Another point is the axis of cooperation—being able to collaborate immediately when something happens. I think we need to create a system of "software centralization" to complement the "hardware decentralization."

I think sharing information before and after a disaster is very important. We tell the administration to quantify and visualize the current situation and release information quickly, even if it might change later. However, the administration often refuses to release it, saying "that approach is problematic."

Also, when we ask the administration to provide a vision of the future so residents can think about what will happen to this town, they say, "We cannot draw a picture on land where acquisition has not been decided." Even if we ask them to draw a conceptual map of what the whole town aims to be, they say, "We can't draw a conceptual map."

However, I believe that drawing a picture sparks resident interest and leads to hope during the long reconstruction period.

I feel like my activities consist of nothing but drawing conceptual maps, but what surprised me was that in the Ota district of Minamisoma, about two years after the earthquake, almost no local meetings could be held until we arrived. No thought at all had been given to what to do with the town moving forward.

So, experts in architecture, landscape, and information like us gathered and held a workshop to create a future vision together. We did the same thing in the Matsuiwa district of Kesennuma.

What makes the recovery from the Great East Japan Earthquake different from previous major disasters is the question of whether people will actually return amidst a declining birthrate and depopulation. Thirty years ago, it might have been easy to draw a future 30 years ahead, but in these difficult times, it is impossible to predict what will happen in 30 years. I think it is very hard to have to draw a picture of the future under these circumstances.

For example, if someone thinks, "I only have 10 years left to live, so I can't move to high ground and take out a loan; cheap public housing is fine," that is a natural way to think. But if they want their grandchildren's generation to live on this land, they might decide to move to higher ground.

Community is a connection formed by people who have lived on that land for a long time, so when housing is reorganized under various conditions due to a disaster, it gets reset. Therefore, the regeneration of a reconstructed town under these new circumstances might not result in new social connections unless at least one or two generations pass.

For instance, moving to high ground might have been fine in the past when people could drive freely, but now, elderly residents say it is painful to have to go up and down such slopes every day for shopping. This is a natural reaction.

The administration must not only work hard during years when there is a budget, but must also keep the next 10 years and the next generation in their sights. Once the hardware is built, how will it be managed? Or perhaps it requires innovation. Even if grand infrastructure is built, if the ideas behind it aren't expanded further, we might miss the chance to create opportunities for the region.

If there are any new or interesting movements from residents—not goals given from above, but a sense of building the town together—I would love for you to introduce them.

In Miyako City, a previous development in front of the station had failed due to resident opposition, so city hall staff seemed to have a sense of rejection toward resident participation. When I spoke to city officials immediately after the disaster about "thinking about how to reconstruct based on everyone's opinions through resident participation," their opinion was that people were currently overwhelmed just trying to get their lives back and couldn't possibly think about the future.

Nevertheless, we gained understanding that we should persistently listen to opinions, and the city took the lead in starting a "Reconstruction Town Planning Study Group" with resident participation. When the opinions from the study group were proposed to the mayor, we were told to leave the rest to the city. However, in the Taro district, the head of the fisheries cooperative consulted us about wanting to proceed with resident-led town planning, questioning if they should just blindly accept what the Urban Planning Division decided. After consulting with everyone, we decided to form a town planning council organization.

The city hall found this very annoying, but it was created completely under resident leadership. Members included the head of the fisheries cooperative, city council members, and fire brigade commanders, among various others.

For example, the city had created new hazard maps and evacuation maps, but in reality, 90 fire brigade members in the prefecture died during this earthquake while conducting evacuation guidance and closing seawall gates. Therefore, we considered making the evacuation guidance more efficient by creating tags that show at a glance whether a house is empty or if someone is still inside.

Also, since the locations of roads and elevated areas change daily, we decided to update the evacuation map every year and created it ourselves. We also included a section to write every year so that lessons learned, such as "once you escape, never go back," are not forgotten.

Those moving to high ground felt great anxiety, so we called for a meeting to see if they wanted to gather once. Two hundred people showed up, and we all shared our anxieties. Since the city hadn't thought of a name for the high ground, we thought of one ourselves, took a survey, and named it "Sanno Estate." We continue to work on things like creating guidelines together and making rules because people weren't familiar with towns that have retaining walls. While the city is busy with reconstruction projects, we continue to identify our own unique problems and think of solutions ourselves.

Resident-led town planning might be something that is possible precisely because it is after a disaster. I think you are doing wonderful work.

Mr. Sugawara, are there any interesting or new initiatives in Kesennuma?

In the Naiwan district that I have been in charge of, organizations like resident neighborhood associations have come together to provide various ideas and think about what to do with this area.

However, even if ideas come out, there are limits to what a resident organization can do alone. To start a project and move it forward, we needed an organization with driving force like a company. So, we decided to use the Kesennuma Regional Development Co., Ltd., a town planning company that had been dormant since before the earthquake, to develop the Naiwan district.

We built a total of three new facility groups and are currently operating them. We have restaurants and retail shops in them. It was difficult due to COVID-19, but we had a grand opening last July and many people came.

Seventy-five people, both locals and outsiders, invested together to build a craft beer factory there. It's not just about making a local specialty; it's about using craft beer as a core to create a new community where everyone from young people to seniors can gather and drink beer.

That was very well received, and we achieved our sales plan for the next three or four years. I wished our sake would sell that well, but for some reason, everyone jumps at craft beer (laughs).

I believe it is very important to do such projects one by one. When you do, various people gather there again. When people gather, various ideas emerge from there, and the next project begins.

In addition, an IT venture from Tokyo has entered the Naiwan area to support the digitalization of Kesennuma. It's not free support; companies are paying a fair price for support menus to grow. We are starting to see a cycle in this small area where new companies enter while pursuing sustainability with economic backing, people gather there, and the next thing happens.

Initiatives that utilize the awareness and human connections born out of reconstruction, rather than conventional methods, bring new hope. How about Iwaki in Fukushima?

Listening to the two of you, to be honest, I feel that Fukushima is in a different phase—or rather, as I mentioned earlier, there are few examples to cite.

In Fukushima, for example, the Innovation Coast Framework is cited as a reconstruction project, but the reality is that it is still largely government-led and dependent on foreign capital as a whole. While that provides significant reconstruction power, in terms of town planning, it is not resident-led; in fact, residents are often absent.

I don't mean this in an abstract sense; there are regions where town planning is proceeding in places where residents literally do not exist. So, in terms of residents being proactively involved in these new movements, Fukushima is quite far behind.

Naturally, this is due to the nuclear accident, and I feel a great sense of regret about it. However, I believe that local residents, private companies, and the administration must work on this by referring to examples from other regions, including the other two disaster-affected prefectures.

After the earthquake, the 3rd UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction was held in Sendai in 2015, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction was created. Looking at this reconstruction process from domestic and international perspectives of disaster recovery or disaster management, what are your thoughts, Mr. Kobiyama?

From a disaster prevention perspective, there are the terms "self-help, mutual aid, and public aid." It has been recognized anew after the experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake that the coordination of these three is extremely important for enhancing disaster resilience.

Earlier, Mr. Sugawara spoke about accepting the seawall and passing it on to the next generation. I believe that having an attachment to the region—loving this town inherited from ancestors and passing that on to future generations—is a very important element in increasing resilience.

In terms of mutual aid, there is helping neighbors or collaborating with various NGOs and NPOs, but I think attachment to the region plays a very important role in connecting people.

You probably know the tsunami story "Inamura no Hi" (The Fire of Rice Sheaves). Goryo Hamaguchi carried out reconstruction from a tsunami in Wakayama. While many people were abandoning the devastated village and leaving, he used his own private funds to build a seawall, creating jobs and keeping the villagers from leaving. And importantly, the seawall he built protected the lives of descendants from a tsunami that struck again 100 years later.

Loving the region like this, passing on the precious area to future generations, and firmly protecting the lives of those generations. To conduct such town planning, I have reaffirmed by listening to everyone's stories that it is important to think of and implement a system where self-help, mutual aid, public aid, residents, economic actors like various companies and chambers of commerce, and the national and local governments all work together effectively.

The last thing I want to address is the current COVID-19 pandemic. For infectious diseases like COVID-19, there is almost no international framework for public health like there is for disasters. Each country and region is fragmented, and it's unclear if there is mutual or public aid. Regional economies are at rock bottom.

I think the COVID-19 disaster might have aspects similar to the recovery from 3.11 in terms of regional thinking, town planning, and community concepts. Including the COVID-19 situation, what should we do to become resilient, crisis-strong towns in the future?

COVID-19 has unique aspects, but basically, we have entered an era where disasters can happen at any time. Consequently, coexistence with disasters becomes a major challenge, and whether a town is strong or not against disasters will become a criterion for its survival.

In that sense, I personally feel a sense of crisis regarding the regional situation. To get to the heart of it, the most fundamental thing is "knowing the region," as Mr. Sugawara mentioned earlier. If you know your living environment to some extent, you can at least evacuate from things like tsunamis or heavy rain disasters. Regarding infectious diseases like COVID-19, knowing the state of your surroundings will lead to behavioral changes.

Broadly speaking, a town strong against crises like the earthquake is a "sustainable town," and if that's the case, a vision for which direction the region will head in the future is very important. However, it's difficult to provide that appropriately. I think the administration has a large role to play here.

At that time, I believe it is helpful to utilize knowledge of architecture and urban planning in town planning, including the optimization of scale.

"Renovation town planning" is being carried out in various places, and I think this is a very important point when considering reconstruction. We keep what can be kept, but change what needs to be changed significantly. For example, just as it is optimal for a large family to move to a smaller house once the children have left, regional societies also need to engage in optimal town planning, including downsizing.

On this point, and this applies to the entire disaster area, it is difficult to talk about downsizing even in the Hamadori region of Fukushima. There is an inevitable push to make things "better than before the earthquake" by inviting new foreign capital and making things grand and luxurious. I think sustainable town planning is difficult if we keep building facilities without considering so-called life-cycle costs.

From the perspective of scale optimization, terms like decentralization and "compact plus network" are being used, but how to position those within urban policy and the national direction is key. Regional spheres are also naturally an important theme.

When a disaster occurs, it is difficult for a single municipality, especially a small town, to respond alone, so we should promote cooperation within regional spheres. Furthermore, the government should go further in showing how rural areas can be sustainable amidst population decline. I think rural areas don't want to talk pessimistically about population decline, but going beyond that to think about what the optimal town or region looks like should be a major theme for the next 10 years.

Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, looking back at human history, such plagues have struck humanity many times, and we are here today because we overcame them.

While looking back at that history, we must once again adapt our culture to overcome this pandemic. Resilience includes not only returning to the original state but also the concept of responding well to a given situation. I think it is necessary to successfully change our society based on the COVID-19 situation.

There is naturally an interaction not only between people, but also between people, architecture, and the town. We need to clarify these interactions and create and practice theories of architectural design, town planning, and design planning that maximize the immunity and healing power we possess.

COVID-19 has really had a psychological impact. In Kesennuma, just as various things were being rebuilt and factories were increasing their operating rates, COVID-19 hit. Since the region is centered on the food industry, sectors from seafood processing to fishing have been affected. Restaurants and hotels were also just getting back on their feet when this damage hit, so the current situation is quite painful.

We are working hard to overcome it, but as Professor Yan mentioned, the challenges and tasks have aspects similar to disasters. It's no use complaining about the government, but the response to the earthquake and the current COVID-19 response are very similar—piecemeal and siloed. I wonder if they can't implement proper policies while looking more closely at the current situation.

We have always been given piecemeal policies, and we have experienced very slow progress because of the siloing. I think if we don't do something about this, Japan will never truly become a strong country.

On the other hand, the experience of the earthquake is somewhat alive. At the time of the earthquake, there was no system in the region to gather various reconstruction actors to do something, but because we have that experience now, gatherings to discuss what to do about COVID-19 happen quite quickly. By gathering and exchanging opinions, we can see a strategy or feel mentally relieved. I think this is a major experience from after the earthquake.

Thinking about making the region stronger in the future, it might come down to cooperation on the resident and private side, but I think it's important to create a system where we can always unite together with the administration.

As Mr. Sugawara said, if you don't always maintain connections, when something serious happens, you have to start creating organizations and committees from scratch while in a panic. Even if we maintain social distance, we must always keep social "connections."

Recently, the term "pre-disaster recovery" is often used in our field. It might seem strange to recover in advance when no disaster has occurred, but it combines two things: "disaster prevention town planning" to assume a disaster occurs and minimize damage, and "advance preparation" to be able to recover as quickly as possible when damage is sustained. Everyone thinks about various things in advance, maintains strong organizations and connections, and creates a reconstruction plan. We also think about business continuity in advance. Or, in areas where tsunami damage is likely, it involves moving to high ground in advance.

This is exactly what resilience is—minimizing damage when something happens, returning to normal as quickly as possible, and creating a society where everyone can build a new way of being within a new society.

Hardware was planned and built immediately after the earthquake, so with COVID-19, there may be things to reconsider, but I think the capacity to respond is high in various aspects.

Also, I felt from your experiences and practices on the ground that the social resilience, community connections, management power, connections between people inside and outside, and information connections built during the process of creating this hardware will be inherited and, in fact, become even stronger and be utilized even amidst the COVID-19 disaster.

Ten years from now, I want to be able to say that Japan's recovery from the blow dealt by COVID-19 was very fast because we utilized the experience of the earthquake.

Thank you very much for today.