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

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 are still ongoing, and the presence of support activities by volunteers and NPOs is always there.

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

A well-known example is the activity 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. This activity 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 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 establishment of the Teidai Settlement in June of the following year, which entered areas facing challenges such as poverty to conduct continuous support activities. 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 insights gained during that support to cross-disciplinary issues such as housing, unemployment, poverty, public health, education for orphans, local autonomy, and community development. As will be discussed later, the presence of young people is significant in activities deployed proactively during disasters. The relief activities connected to the Teidai Settlement were also the pioneer of large-scale disaster volunteer activities deployed by youth.

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 "Inaugural Year of Volunteering" stems from the fact that a vast number of disaster volunteers were active. The number reached a cumulative total of 1.17 million in the first three months and approximately 1.38 million over one year (Hyogo Prefecture Citizen Life Department, "Estimated Number of General Disaster Volunteer Participants for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Jan 1995–Mar 2000)"). Regarding the era at the time, there were many incidents where the collapse of the bubble economy and collusion between politics, bureaucracy, and business came to light. It was an event that occurred under circumstances where a sense of stagnation drifted through society as a whole, with successive events symbolizing the fraying of existing social systems. Amid the shock of a major earthquake occurring in an urban area, strong interest was directed toward these support activities along with a sense of impression. This was not merely a heartwarming story; it was likely because people saw potential in a different way of acting—one not hindered by bureaucratic organizations or systems that can sometimes become rigid and inefficient—and in the latent power of Japanese society where activities requested by no one could occur on such a scale.

Including the aforementioned support activities during the Great Kanto Earthquake and the significant participation of volunteers during the disaster on Okushiri Island 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 volunteering. 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 the law for the first time in the Basic Act on Disaster Management, which was revised 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 significant damage to their families and 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 at the scope of existing 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, October 1995 issue).

This information was collected primarily by the headquarters for disaster control for the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake (Southern Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake) 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 applicants and incoming students (258 cases total), as well as tuition waivers and scholarship loans for current students (145 cases each).

Meanwhile, regarding relief 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 affiliated schools as a whole (3,969,937 yen), among others provided individually or through the Athletic Association. While these were all 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 United Mita-kai (Mita-hyoron, 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 era at the time, and various forms of support were sent from all over the country. Amidst this, 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 had 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 thought-provoking today, such as those regarding the necessity of government response. Among them, regarding donations, there is an editorial titled "Expressing the Feelings of Fellow Countrymen" (November 6). It is interesting that he states, "While it is impossible to completely rescue tens of thousands of victims within dozens of miles with a mere pittance of charitable donations, I, setting aside the argument of the amount of these donations, value the efficacy of these items in cultivating the virtuous heart (tokushin) of human life." The reason he associates it with a virtuous heart is that he believes it is "nothing other than cultivating and developing that virtuous heart, which is necessary for the establishment of human society." He continues, "Those who receive this will not necessarily be saved by it alone," suggesting that it is never about the size of the amount, but rather the idea that the existence of such a virtuous heart is what 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; therefore, he states succinctly, "Even if the money and goods of a donation are slight, their efficacy is by no means slight."

Along with these editorials, the Jiji Shinpo actively recruited donations, collecting 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 Director. The period was from February 1 to February 28, and 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 consultation was approximately 2,500, and the total number of patients treated was 876 (Mita-hyoron, October 1995 issue).

The details of this process are recorded in a roundtable discussion published in the same issue of Mita-hyoron. Masahiro Ogami, then an assistant in the School of Medicine, reached the health center inside the Higashinada Ward Office on the 20th, three days after the earthquake, and recalled the flow of identifying the need for an organized response based on the situation in the disaster area. Based on that report and the many voices wishing to volunteer 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. Ogami reflected, "...when it was announced that such activities would be organized at Keio Hospital, over 100 nurses raised their hands, and conversely, it was difficult to coordinate the dispatch; a very large number of doctors from internal medicine, surgery, and pediatrics also volunteered spontaneously. 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 response capacity of Keio University in the scene of support activities shown spontaneously and actively.

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 graduate students at 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.

The 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 where they were needed. On the SFC side, activities included recruiting volunteers within Keio, coordinating groups, holding briefing sessions about once a week, coordinating communication with the disaster area and lodging, and enrolling in volunteer insurance. In particular, it played an intermediary support role, such as obtaining daily information from student volunteers active in the disaster area, editing and disseminating it using information and communication equipment, and delivering support precisely to areas where aid had not yet reached, which was seen as a pioneering aspect for that time.

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—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 30 total on Awaji Island) participated in the activities (edited by Kaneko et al., 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 electronic bulletin boards (BBS) of various closed PC communications with internet net news, making free access to information regarding 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 that anyone could access; although it could not yet be called active utilization given the era, it would be considered 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.

Today, it is not uncommon to say that an intermediary support role for matching and managing volunteers is necessary for support activities in disaster areas. 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, mismatch problems were frequently pointed out where supplies were overwhelmingly insufficient in areas that were not shown. 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 the midst of a sudden major disaster, 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. In particular, for voluntary and mobile support activities, dynamic and autonomous decentralized coordination will inevitably be necessary. Such realizations also led to a sudden surge in interest in NPOs that could serve as organizational coordination entities and discussions on developing their foundations. The 1998 Act on the Promotion of Specified Non-profit Activities (NPO Law) is one such movement. Today, the types of corporations conducting private support activities are diverse, including general corporations and public interest corporations, but there are nearly 50,000 NPO corporations alone—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 nature of support, such as by acting as both a driver and a restraint. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake was an era before the rapid increase in internet users (1995 was called the Inaugural Year of the Internet as well as the Inaugural 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 regarding 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 Inaugural 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 engagement 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 cooperation from the Office of Communications and Public Relations and the SFC Media Center. I would like to express my gratitude here.

[Notes]

*1 Regarding institutional impact, 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.