Visiting the Earthquake Archives: What is the Ongoing History of 3/11?

Writer Profile

Satoshi Ouchi
Other : Asahi Shimbun Reporter
Keio University alumni

Satoshi Ouchi
Other : Asahi Shimbun Reporter
Keio University alumni

2025/04/14

Three years old, three years old, and one year old. At the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, our household had three infants. Due to the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, powdered milk, drinking water, and disposable diapers were in short supply. My wife and children temporarily moved to the Kansai region.

In the fall of that same year, my grandmother, who had evacuated from her hometown of Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture, to Yokohama City, passed away at the age of 99. Her death was classified as earthquake-related, and she is included in the figures announced every March as a subject of mourning.

Panic buying and refraining from purchases. Planned power outages and voluntary evacuations. Even without direct damage, many people likely remember the vivid contemporary events that occurred around them.

However, even events that many people experienced and remembered, and which garnered public attention, cannot resist the passage of time. Memories fade, and the number of people from generations with no memory or experience of the event increases. Who will pass on the story of the earthquake, which grows more distant every year, and how?

This is not a generalization. My older children, who will be high school seniors in the spring, still remember the shaking of the earthquake and the sight of their grandmother. On the other hand, my youngest child, who starts high school in the spring, has no memory of it. Can I pass on the story of the earthquake to these children as a "family event"?

In 2014, I made an "internal career change" from a magazine editor to a newspaper reporter. In 2018, I returned to working in Tokyo, which brought me closer to the disaster-affected areas. Around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading up to the 10th anniversary of the earthquake, I began tentatively driving through the affected areas. At first alone. Then, bringing family and friends. To the tsunami-hit areas of Iwaki City. Heading north to Futaba and Soma Districts. To the coastal areas of Miyagi and Iwate.

Transportation networks were being restored in various places, and earthquake ruins and public facilities were beginning to appear. In Fukushima Prefecture, National Route 6 was fully restored in 2014, allowing cars to pass (and in 2022, it became accessible by bicycle or on foot). In 2015, the Joban Expressway fully opened. I was also encouraged by the prefecture's 2016 official poster, "Come visit." In 2020, the entire JR Joban Line resumed operations. The disaster-affected areas were no longer difficult places to visit.

How to pass on the family story. How to observe and record ongoing contemporary history. While continuing a journey carrying these two questions, a book was born that calls on young readers in their teens, such as junior high and high school students, to travel to the disaster-affected areas.

It is not just a place for sightseeing or study. It would be a waste to forget. I feel that the disaster-affected areas are places of deep learning, worthy of engaging with throughout one's life.