The question of how to most effectively commemorate disasters is a particular issue in Japan as a result of the archipelago being subject to such regular natural catastrophes, including volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunami waves, typhoons and landslides. Despite the best efforts of those impacted by such disasters, communities still often overlook warnings from the past – a good example being the tsunami memory stones of the Tohoku region.
In our March Third Thursday Lecture, delivered from Lund in Sweden, where Professor Junzo Uchiyama is currently affiliated researcher for the CALDERA project, Professor Uchiyama placed the history of disasters in long-term perspective, taking us back many millennia to the eruptions of Mount Fuji and the Kikai-Akahoya caldera (now represented by Sakurajima in Kagoshima Bay) and the resilient responses of prehistoric inhabitants of the archipelago to these near-existential cataclysms.
The talk marked the 15th anniversary of the Great East Japan triple disaster of 11 March 2011, when the largest earthquake in a millennium, with its epicentre off the Pacific coast of Honshu triggered a massive and destructive tsunami wave leading to the near-meltdown at the Tokyo Electric Company’s Fukushima nuclear plant. The Institute has followed the subsequent rescue and recovery process, and we continue to take a close interest in how communities have adapted to the post-disaster scenario, fifteen years on. We have of course subsequently been recently reminded of the devastating power of Japan’s active environment with the New Year’s Day 2025 earthquake on the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture and the destruction of the urushi industry in the city of Wajima.
Professor Uchiyama presented three case studies (Mount Fuji, Kikai-Akahoya and the Sanriku Coast, Great East Japan Disaster): through careful analysis of numbers and scale of sites and continuities in material culture including pottery styles, he effectively demonstrated how prehistoric Jomon populations, while massively impacted upon by these events, managed to recover and adjust to the new conditions after each disaster. In his analysis of the most recent example, the Sanriku coast, he showed how the networks of connections established prior to the disaster were enhanced and provided the basis for regional renewal, offering new opportunities to revitalise communities through festivals and other cultural activities. As such he was able to make a convincing case that it is indeed possible to look beyond the doom and gloom that inevitably accompanies such major disasters – even though that is doubtless extremely difficult for all those directly impacted.
Of particular interest was the revelation that the Mount Fuji that is now such a well-known global icon, and indeed UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right, looked very different to the people who lived at places like Oshikakubo, one of the earliest known repeatedly occupied settlements in the archipelago. The landscapes of the Japanese archipelago are of course an object lesson in accepting that things will always change, and indeed the aesthetic appreciation of the transience of all things has such resonance throughout Japanese history (and prehistory). We look forward to further insights from the CALDERA project. A full recording of the talk is available on our YouTube channel here.
Professor Simon Kaner
Executive Director