[Special Feature: Disaster Prevention and Communication] Gen Miyagaki: Considering the Significance of Private Sector Support from the First Year of Volunteering

2024/12/04

One year has passed since the major earthquake on the Noto Peninsula, and it has been nearly three months since the heavy rain disaster occurred while the scars of that immense damage remained. In the disaster-affected areas, numerous activities for relief, recovery, and reconstruction continue even now, and the presence of support activities by volunteers and NPOs is always there.

In recent years, when disasters occur frequently, the existence of volunteers and NPOs—the voluntary support of the private sector in disaster areas—is indispensable. Looking back, records of such support activities also remain from the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake (1923) about 100 years ago.

A well-known example is the activities carried out by students of Tokyo Imperial University; it is said that relief activities for as many as 2,000 evacuees on the university campus began just two days after the earthquake. These activities led to the organization of a student relief corps under the efforts of Gentaro Suehiro and Shigetoo Hozumi (also known as the model for Professor Hodaka depicted in the NHK drama "Tiger and Wings"), both professors of the Faculty of Law, and expanded into relief activities at Ueno Park. This continued until mid-October of that year and eventually led to the Teidai Settlement in June of the following year, which conducted continuous support activities by entering areas facing challenges such as poverty. The issue of being affected by a disaster is not limited to direct relief at the time of the event. It shows a continuity from the insights gained during that support to various cross-disciplinary issues such as housing, unemployment, poverty, public health, education for orphans, local autonomy, and urban planning. As will be mentioned later, the presence of young people is significant in activities proactively deployed during disasters. The relief activities connected to the Teidai Settlement were also the pioneer of large-scale disaster volunteer activities deployed by young people.

The term "disaster volunteer" has also come to be commonly used today, but the turning point for its widespread social use was the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995.

The reason the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake is known as the "First Year of Volunteering" stems from the fact that a large number of disaster volunteers were active. The number reached a cumulative total of approximately 1.17 million in the first three months and 1.38 million over one year (Hyogo Prefecture Citizens' Life Department, "Estimated Number of General Disaster Volunteers for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Jan 1995–Mar 2000)"). Regarding the social climate at the time, there were many incidents bringing to light the collapse of the bubble economy and collusion between politicians, bureaucrats, and businesses. Because it was an event occurring under circumstances where a series of incidents symbolized the fraying of existing social systems and a kind of sense of stagnation drifted through society as a whole, strong interest was directed toward these support activities along with a sense of being moved by them amidst the shock of the major earthquake that occurred in an urban area. This was not simply a heartwarming story; it was likely because people saw potential in a different way of acting—one where activities requested by no one could occur on such a scale, representing the latent power of Japanese society, distinct from being hindered by bureaucratic organizations and systems that can sometimes become rigid and inefficient.

Including the aforementioned support activities during the Great Kanto Earthquake and the significant participation of volunteers during the disaster on Okushiri Island just before in 1993 (Hokkaido Nansei-oki Earthquake), volunteers had become an indispensable presence during disasters even before the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. However, it is a matter of public consensus that 1995 was a major milestone for disasters and volunteers. At the end of 1995, it was established that January 17 would be designated as "Disaster Prevention and Volunteer Day" every year, which continues to this day. Furthermore, the term "volunteer" was explicitly mentioned in law for the first time in the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act amended that same month. Such facts also indicate the magnitude of the social impact.*1

Keio University, its Keio students, and Keio University alumni were also involved in the damage and support of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and several articles conveying those circumstances remain in the Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press) and Jukuho from that time. Although precise data is unknown, regarding the damage, it is stated that "there was little damage to faculty, staff, and students themselves, but there was significant damage to their families and family homes," and since approximately 7,800 Keio University alumni resided in the affected areas, there was "damage to a considerable number of people" (Jukukan-kyoku (Keio Corporate Administration) Bulletin No. 23, 1996). Looking within the scope of remaining records, a summary of members of the Kobe Keio Club, a Mita-kai, shows 6 deaths (including 4 family members) and 203 houses completely or partially destroyed (Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press), October 1995 issue).

This information was collected primarily by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Southern Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake) headquarters for disaster control established within Keio immediately after the earthquake, and necessary measures were taken. As part of the response, there were waivers or reductions of entrance examination fees, admission fees, and tuition for affected examinees and incoming students (258 cases in total), as well as tuition waivers and scholarship loans for current students (145 cases each).

Meanwhile, regarding donations, funds were collected from faculty and staff volunteers at each campus (totaling 8.75 million yen), the School of Medicine and hospital (5.557 million yen), student organizations and individual students (3,055,162 yen), and the entire affiliated school system (3,969,937 yen), among others, including individual support and support through the Athletic Association. While all of these were from volunteers, in addition to these, 2 million yen was provided by Keio University. Furthermore, according to the recollections of Reijiro Hattori, then President of the Keio Rengo Mita-Kai, over 20 million yen in donations came from 237 Mita-kai and Keio University alumni groups nationwide, which, together with 5 million yen from the Keio Rengo Mita-Kai, was delivered to the Kansai Combined Mita-kai (Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press), October 1995 issue).

The total scale of donations for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake reached approximately 178.8 billion yen, which was considered the highest in the post-war period at the time, and various forms of support were sent from all over the country. Among these, the fact that there was this much movement through the Keio University network alone should be recorded.

In the aforementioned recollections of Mr. Hattori, he viewed these movements as an expression of Keio Gijuku Shachu cooperation and also touched upon Yukichi Fukuzawa's proposals regarding the major earthquake (Nobi Earthquake) in 1891, which centered on Gifu and Aichi prefectures and resulted in a scale and damage exceeding that of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.

Delving slightly deeper into this Nobi Earthquake, there were 20 editorials published in the Jiji Shinpo from that year to the next, many of which remain rich in suggestions even today, such as the necessity of the government's response. Among them, regarding donations, there is an editorial titled "Expressing the Feelings of Fellow Countrymen" (November 6). It is interesting to note that he states, "Although it is impossible to completely rescue tens of thousands of victims within dozens of miles with a small amount of charitable donations, I set aside the argument of the quantity of these donations and value the efficacy of such things in cultivating the virtuous heart of human life." He associates this with a virtuous heart because he believes that "it is nothing other than cultivating and developing that virtuous heart, which is necessary for the establishment of human society." He continues, "Even those who receive this will not necessarily be saved by it alone," suggesting that it is not the amount, but the existence of such a virtuous heart that makes society what it is. Beyond whether it is directly useful, such interaction ("connecting heart to heart through emotion") is indispensable for the establishment of society, and therefore he states succinctly, "Even if the money and goods donated are small, their efficacy is by no means small."

Along with these editorials, the Jiji Shinpo actively recruited donations, and it is said to have collected approximately 26,000 yen in the currency of the time (Koho Bosai 36, 2006). Not only the Jiji Shinpo, but the newspaper media played a major role in encouraging people's support movements.

Regarding the relationship between the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and Keio University, along with donations, there was support for the disaster areas through volunteering. Let us look at two examples here.

First, from the School of Medicine, the "Great Hanshin Earthquake Relief Keio University Medical Team" was formed at the request of the Kobe City Health Bureau Officer. From February 1 to February 28, a total of 21 doctors and 22 nurses were dispatched to evacuation centers in Higashinada-ku, Kobe (Sumiyoshi Junior High School, Mikagekita Elementary School, Konan Elementary School, Amida-ji Temple, and Nada High School). The number of disaster victims eligible for medical care was approximately 2,500, and the total number of patients treated was 876 (Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press), October 1995 issue).

The details of this process are recorded in a roundtable discussion published in the same issue of Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press). Masahiro Oue, then an assistant in the School of Medicine, recalls arriving at the health center in the Higashinada Ward Office on the 20th, three days after the earthquake, and finding the need for an organized response based on the situation in the disaster area. Based on that report and the many voices calling for volunteering within the School of Medicine, a policy was decided to conduct continuous volunteer activities organizationally as Keio University, leading to the aforementioned team dispatch. Regarding these movements, Mr. Oue reflected, "...with the organization of such activities at Keio Hospital, over 100 nurses raised their hands, and conversely, it was difficult to coordinate the dispatch, and many doctors from internal medicine, surgery, and pediatrics volunteered very proactively. When I actually went there, I saw an incredible number of volunteers walking into the site with backpacks," seeing the potential of Japanese society and the high responsiveness of Keio University in the scenes of voluntary and proactive support activities.

Another support activity was centered on the Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC). The earthquake occurred at the end of the first year the Graduate School of Media and Governance was established, but a call was made primarily by the graduate students of the time (the first cohort), including the author, and volunteer activities were deployed for about two months with the addition of SFC undergraduate students and students from other campuses.

A characteristic of this activity was that volunteer recruitment was conducted based in the research space of the graduate school building called the "Loft," where information from the site was collected and volunteers were dispatched directly to areas in need. On the SFC side, activities included recruiting volunteers within Keio, coordinating groups, holding briefing sessions about once a week, coordinating communication and accommodation in the disaster area, and enrolling in volunteer insurance. In particular, it showed pioneering aspects for the time, such as obtaining daily information from student volunteers active in the disaster area, editing and disseminating it using information and communication equipment, and playing an intermediary support role to deliver pinpoint support to areas where aid had not yet reached.

Students wishing to volunteer deployed their activities in stages under that coordination. When the first group entered the site on February 10, several people each worked at private independent living centers for people with disabilities, nursery schools, and special needs schools in Chuo-ku, Hyogo-ku, and Tarumi-ku in Kobe. They also established a communication environment through laptop computers and telephone lines, which was a strength of SFC students, and proceeded with information sharing with the SFC side and other organizations. Furthermore, while obtaining information on-site, they expanded their activities to Awaji Island (Hokudan-cho and Ichinomiya-cho), where support was delayed compared to Kobe City, starting activities from February 24. These activities continued until April 1, and nearly 100 graduate and undergraduate students (including nearly 30 on Awaji Island) participated in the activities (Kaneko et al., eds., 1996).

Another feature was that a large-scale project called InterVnet was launched under the leadership of Ikuyo Kaneko (then a professor at the Graduate School of Media and Governance), serving as the foundation for these activities. In this period before the spread of the internet, commercial PC communications (Nifty-Serve, PC-VAN, People, etc.) served as information communication. This project interconnected the closed electronic bulletin boards (BBS) of various PC communications with internet net news, making free access to information about the disaster area possible on any system through the cooperation of each company. It was a project to turn information closed to specific network users into information accessible to everyone, and while it could not yet be called active utilization given the era, it can be regarded as a pioneering initiative considering subsequent developments. Reflecting the high level of interest at the time, a demonstration by students was planned within an NHK special program ("Door to Symbiosis") on March 23 of that year.

In support activities in disaster areas, it is not uncommon today to say that an intermediary support role for matching and managing volunteers is necessary. However, in 1995, many volunteers entered the site relying only on information from mass media such as television and newspapers reporting on the state of evacuation centers, and the number of volunteers varied greatly depending on the evacuation center. Similarly, for relief supplies, many were delivered to evacuation centers shown in news footage, while on the other hand, many mismatch problems were pointed out where supplies were overwhelmingly insufficient in areas that were not. From the Nobi Earthquake until this point, only edited information from mass media could be relied upon, and it can be said that along with the magnitude of its overall influence, there was a gap in support created by the difference between events that were reported and those that were not.

In a major disaster that occurs suddenly, it takes time and cost not only for mass media but also for the administration to coordinate and redistribute support after grasping the overall situation. Especially for voluntary and mobile support activities, dynamic and autonomous decentralized coordination is absolutely necessary. Such realizations also led to a sudden advancement in interest in NPOs that could become organizational coordination entities and discussions on their infrastructure development. The 1998 Law to Promote Specified Non-Profit Activities (NPO Law) is one such movement. Today, the types of corporations that conduct private support activities are diverse, including general corporations and public interest corporations, but there are nearly 50,000 NPO corporations alone, which can be called the pioneers, and 4,452 corporations list disaster relief activities as a field in their articles of incorporation.

Furthermore, movements to utilize information networks during disasters are not uncommon today. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, the influence of SNS has grown, and there are aspects where the transformation of media has changed the way support is provided, such as by acting as both a driver and a restraint. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake was an era before the sudden increase in internet users (1995 was called the first year of the internet as well as the first year of volunteering), and therefore the effects of these were limited. Even in the aforementioned SFC activities, there is no doubt that there were skeptical views of the sight of operating computers in front of direct support activities. However, at this time, several others were also launched, such as the Inter-Volunteer Network (IVN) centered on Kobe University and the World NGO Network (WNN) with technical support from researchers. With these movements as a catalyst, activities to support the dissemination and sharing of information began to be seen, especially during large-scale disasters, and the term "information volunteer" was created at this time along with disaster volunteer. In these activities as well, private support organizations such as NPOs are indispensable today.

As described above, the movement of the first year of volunteering triggered by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake was an important phase for the formation of voluntary private support schemes in subsequent disasters. And it should also be confirmed that the presence of young people was always at the center of those pioneering initiatives. Furthermore, the roles of universities and students are found in various forms, such as the power of human networks including graduates, and involvement with society through the synthesis and practice of specialized knowledge.

Next January 17 will mark 30 years since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. I hope it will be an opportunity to reconsider what universities can do along with the potential of private sector support.

Acknowledgments: In collecting materials, I received the cooperation of the Office of Communications and Public Relations and the SFC Media Center. I would like to express my gratitude.

【Notes】

*1 Regarding institutional influence, at Keio University as well, a volunteer leave system (treating volunteer activities during large-scale disasters as leave on days deemed necessary and not interfering with business) was added to the employment regulations for staff on June 23, 1995.