March 11 marks the 15th anniversary of the tragedy in Japan, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake was followed by a massive tsunami and an accident at a nuclear power plant. This disaster divided the lives of many Japanese people into before and after and continues to define their entire lives. To mark the anniversary of the tragedy, Medusa is publishing two Japanese photo projects reflecting the natural disaster and its aftermath. The first refers to life Before the tragedy, this lost past connects to the present. The second is dedicated to the invisible wound left not only by radiation, but also by forced displacement, as well as the complete separation of bonds. Whether between people and place, or between each other.
– project Munemasa Takahashi About preserving memory and life before tragedy
An earthquake in Japan caused an incredible tsunami. Its area is more than 550 square kilometers. Nearly 20,000 people died, and 2,500 others went missing. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, and tens of thousands of personal belongings were destroyed or lost. Including the most valuable images for many – that is, photographs containing moments from past lives. Life before the disaster.
To find the lost photos among the rubble and return them to their owners, a project called “Memory Rescue” was launched in Japan. Volunteers from across the country searched, cleaned and scanned family photos, then contacted the people in them.
The photographs, which could no longer be returned to their owners because they were severely damaged by the elements, became the basis of a project by Munemasa Takahashi, a photographer and volunteer with the Save Memory organization. Takahashi turned these “desperate” photographs into a traveling exhibition called the “Lost and Found Project.”
It also had a practical meaning: sometimes people found their relatives even in these badly damaged images. Munemasa Takahashi told Medusa that work on the project is still ongoing.
Here’s what Munimasa Takahashi also told Medusa:
Today marks exactly 15 years since the earthquake that struck eastern Japan. In Yamamoto City, Miyagi Prefecture, we processed about 800,000 photographs, of which 470,000 were returned to their owners.
When a family member is swept away by a tsunami and their body is never found, their loved ones want peace of mind. They continue their search, clinging to the hope that their loved one may still be out there somewhere. Even when time passes and they come to terms with the fact that the person is unlikely to survive, it is still difficult for them to move on. When these people find at least one photo of the deceased in our archives, they tell us: “Now we can finally have a funeral.”
Photos from the rubble were collected mainly by the Japan Self-Defense Forces, firefighters, police officers and others involved in search and rescue operations. Our role was to clean up and return the found images. In total, more than a thousand people participated in the cleanup work. Some of them worked directly in the affected area, and some throughout Japan. We sent them pictures by mail.
During our work, we realized that sometimes situations occur when a person loses almost everything he owns – and that in such moments, a single image from a quieter period of life can become an extraordinary source of strength.
For those of us who are fortunate enough to live in peaceful circumstances, it can be difficult to be truly grateful for our happiness. We take that for granted. But looking at these photos, we are reminded that the moment we are living now is truly priceless.
– project Yuki Iwanami About wounds after a disaster
Yuki Iwanami Filming of Fukushima began immediately after the nuclear accident. For three years he returned again and again, and in 2014 he completely moved to live there. All this time, he observed and recorded how this region was changing and experiencing the consequences of the tragedy.
Here’s what Yuki Iwanami has to say:
[После трагедии] I felt a strong desire to go to Fukushima, even though I knew nothing about the area and had no idea what I could achieve with photographs. But immediately I saw the usual rural landscape: forests, fields, hills and mountains. Radioactive materials and their effects cannot be seen with the naked eye. Only high values on the dosimeter proved the presence of radiation here.
This is an undeniable fact [катастрофы] Against the backdrop of the peaceful and picturesque landscape, it aroused in me an indescribable feeling of awe. I wondered if it was possible to make invisible damage visible, so I continued photographing in Fukushima.
Yuki watched people gradually return to their abandoned homes during the evacuation. Through photographs (landscapes and portraits of local residents), he wanted to show not only the invisible radiation, but also the complex relationships between people and their homeland, as well as the trauma of the region.
Yuki Iwanami continues:
I couldn’t help but notice the constant state of anxiety that burdens people, even though they seem to be living normal lives. […] The disaster led to deep contradictions. Evacuation zones created artificial borders, changed the status of territories and destroyed friendly relations.
The project name was inspired by these two images (below). The first shows a persimmon contaminated with radioactive material. The second contains containers containing contaminated soil. Although they were placed in containers to keep people safe, there was no place to store the containers themselves. As a result, huge amounts of this plastic-packed soil have taken over many fields and forests in the area. In addition, the word “blue” in Japanese means “immaturity.” We are talking about the immaturity of people who could not control atomic energy.
And in Fukushima, I realized: the closer you get to the truth, the worse you see. Just as radiation cannot be perceived by the five senses, the damage resulting from it and its consequences cannot be felt as a tangible reality. Perhaps problems related to realizing the truth are a feature not only of Fukushima, but of the whole world.
A complete lockdown has been imposed on most evacuated communities in Fukushima It has been removed By 2020. Now there are no longer completely uninhabited cities and towns in the prefecture. closed Only 2.4% of the province’s territory can be visited. However, of the 164,000 evacuees from Fukushima, only 12,000 have returned to live. Many Japanese Don’t trust Government information about reducing radiation levels, and they don’t want to live in ghost towns taken over by wildlife.