Framing Negative Heritage in Disaster Education: School Memorials after 3.11
Julia Gerster, Flavia Fulco
Abstract
The disasters of March 11, 2011 washed away whole villages on the coast of Northeast Japan and destroyed the lives of thousands. Meskell (2012, 558) describes such impacted places as ‘negative heritage, a conflictual site that becomes the repository of negative memory in the collective imaginary.’ As the recovery of the Tōhoku region in Northeast Japan continues, debates have arisen about which disaster ruins, or shinsai ikō, should be kept as memorials. Most places chosen to be preserved represent cases of good evacuation practice. However, some survivors have fought for also keeping those places in which their relatives died and the evacuation procedures failed to save them. In this chapter, we explore the construction of the narratives surrounding two schools preserved as memorials in Miyagi Prefecture. While Arahama Elementary became a safe haven for 320 people, Okawa Elementary became an example of bad evacuation practice that led to the death of 74 children and 10 teachers. Drawing on the analysis of these ‘exhibitions’, the preservation efforts, and first-hand accounts offered at the two sites, we aim to contribute to the understanding of the importance of negative heritage in disaster education. Examining the process of framing negative heritage within the collective memory of these communities is also crucial to understanding the effects of the disaster on local identities.