The Local Community and Young People after the Disaster in 2011

<p>This paper tries to describe different phases in local communities and young people based on a number of narratives after the disaster in 2011. At the beginning, this article focuses on a stunning non-fiction book by a foreign correspondent, who describes the tragedy of Okawa Elementary School, where seventy-four students and ten teachers died or went missing after the tsunami disaster on March 11, 2011. Why did the teachers not evacuate the local children to safety? The accounts of the individuals most relevant to answering this question had been inaccessible to the public, but the foreign correspondent has attempted to reveal them, based in large part on his own observations and interviews, and he points out that there was an active effort to lobby the deputy principal to keep the students in the school playground. The deputy principal might have obeyed the village head and some senior local people against his better judgment. I interpret this as a sign of the historically conservative mentality of local Japanese communities, which is characterized by unequal social status among its members and the discouragement of any discussion that requires equality and mutual respect.<br><br>In contrast, I present a counter-example of a local community before the disaster that had been facilitating discussions among the school principal, teachers, and the resident head. As a result of this style of communication and action among equal and different people, there was an effective response to the disaster.<br><br>The focus of the paper then turns to the words and actions of young people. After the disaster, young people, even young students, have been speaking bravely in public about their own suffering, serving as living witnesses or storytellers about the catastrophe. I will introduce some teenage storytellers and present their narratives to understand why they talk about their own painful experiences and what happened to young people in the disaster zone. Their honest and quietly profound words express a sense of guilt instead of innocence, e.g. “I could not help the residents” or “My grandpa died because he was waiting for me in front of my house on the coast”. Their speeches are neither mere expressions of their emotions and stress nor just exemplary narratives or lessons on how to reduce risk in a disaster. They are also actions that share each individual’s unique existence after being exposed to a harsh reality with different people who did not suffer from the catastrophe or suffered in different ways.<br><br>The words and actions of these young people require, potentially or explicitly, a physically, emotionally, and intellectually safe place where they can speak and listen to each other, separate from their domestic or local place. This is a place that should be called a “school” because that word’s original meaning comes from the ancient Greek “σχολἠ,” meaning leisure, a holiday away from business, or a place of refuge.</p>