TSUNAMI

GALLERY

The Archaeology of a Disaster

the Aftermath of Japans 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami
Dean Chapman
On Friday 11th March 2011, as the end of the working week moved to its close, most people in Japan would have been looking forward to a late winters weekend; many students would have been celebrating the approaching end to the academic year. Then, at 2:46 in the afternoon, a colossal earthquake struck deep beneath the Pacific Ocean some 45 miles off of Japans northeast coast. Tsunami sirens wailed along the length of Japans eastern seaboard and local announcements repeatedly implored people to flee to higher ground: it wasnt an exercise and a major tsunami was heading their way. It is reckoned the first tsunami made land some 26 minutes later. Within the following hour thousands had drowned, towns and cities had been decimated, and a major nuclear incident was unfolding. I was preparing breakfast for my wife and children when the first reports of an earthquake in Japan broke on the radio particularly worrying news, as my wife is Japanese. We switched on the TV but the now famous footage had yet to reach the international news channels. Sketchy radio dispatches spoke of tsunamis inundating hundreds of miles of Japans northern Pacific coast. It took hours for my wife to contact her family, who live north of Tokyo, to make sure everyone was safe. Three months after the catastrophe, I hitchhiked down the northeastern coast of Honshu, Japans main island, retracing a journey Id made in the summer of 2000. Where there had once been vibrant fishing communities and the popular tourist destinations of the striking Rikuchu Kaigan National Park, there was now utter devastation: towns and cities had been wiped from the surface earth, tsunami walls, bridges, roads and railways had disappeared. The jumbled scattering of broken materials and miscellaneous objects, everyday items and personal effects that littered the coastline were being systematically gathered for processing. Survivors sometimes spoke of their fortunate escape from the inundation, and of the loss of friends, homes and livelihoods. I made further journeys along the Sanriku Coast in October 2011 and September 2012. My approach documenting the consequences of the earthquake and tsunami was firstly determined, in a very straightforward manner, by having previous visited the northern mountainous coastline I re-photographed locations that I had visited before. However, through an evolving process of trying to interpret the human and geographical scale of the disaster in a more subtle and measured manner, I began to look for cultural and personal items or locations that would act as metaphors for the disaster and the recovery. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is located approximately 80 miles south of the area documented in this exhibition. www.deanchapmanphotos.com