On September 13th, our program had a lecture given by Flavia Fulco, a professor at Sophia University. Her lecture focused on the triple disaster in 2011. Professor Fulco started her presentation by describing some of the volunteer work she did five years after the disaster. After showing us some pictures and describing her experience, Professor Fulco transitioned into discussing the construction going on in the northern part of Japan. In areas greatly effected by the tsunami, like coastal towns, there is the construction of seawalls. There has also been reconstruction of buildings into tourist shopping hubs. She explained that this is controversial because it is greatly altering what the towns look like, and it doesn’t look the same to people who actually live there.
Professor Fulco also discussed the importance of “kataribe”, or storytelling, to pass on the stories of disaster. Many of the historical sights we have seen earlier in the program, like the A-Dome and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, use this type of storytelling. We were also informed that despite the great tragedy of the triple disaster, people are experiencing positive things from it, like the ability to travel and spread their stories.
Later in the day, we went to the d47 Off-Grid Living exhibit in Shibuya. Each prefecture in Tokyo contributed their own table to the exhibit. While most of the information was in Japanese, much of it focus on sustainable housing and farming.
On September 14th, we had a lecture given to us by Kristi which focused on Japanese security policies. She quickly gave us an explanation of current external threats, like North Korea and China, as well as some internal factors to security, like Article 9, public opinion, political parties, and economic factors. Kristi also taught us a little bit about the current Prime Minister, Abe. Abe tends to be fairly conservative, and has expressed a desire to build up Japan’s collective security and rewrite the constitution. However, he has had many scandals that have greatly reduced his popularity amongst Japanese citizens.
In the afternoon, we went to see a Bunraku play at the National Theatre Little Theatre. While it was a very long show, it involved the use of specialized puppetry, master narrators, and fantastic musicians. The puppets themselves were very intricate, with very detailed clothing and faces. The show had many different characters and themes, but it primarily focused around the mischief caused by a golden furred, nine tailed fox.
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