This article introduces the sticky notes visitors contributed and shows what the panels looked like during the exhibition period of “March 12: The First Meal After the Earthquake ––– When, Where, and What Did You Eat?” For the summary of each exhibited panel, please check out the [INDEX] page.

 

▼About “March 12: The First Meal After the Earthquake”
▼About sticky note comments

 

[Fall 2014] Exhibited Panels

 

Exhibition Period: October 1st to November 16th, 2014
Venue: Sendai Mediatheque

 

 

 

[Spring 2015] Exhibited Panels

Exhibition Period: February 20th to March 18th, 2015
Venue: Sendai Mediatheque

*On the panels with sticky notes from the [Fall 2014] exhibition, visitors added their own comments.
*Sticky notes written in English are translations of the Japanese text indicated by the arrow.

 

 

 

Comments by Visitors about the Panels

Some comments are not directly related to the photo content or location.

 

▷We had a stock of about ten plastic bottles of two-liter water, but our family of five quickly used them up. We were saved when we learned that we could use the drinking water in the park! I remember our kids went back and forth many times by bicycle to bring water home…

▷From that day, I keep a rolling stock, where you keep and use stock daily. My living concept is to make disaster prevention ordinary rather than extraordinary.

▷As the expiry date of the stocked food was coming up, I bought some more, then March 11 came. If I had “bought some after eating,” I might not have had any stock. I seriously thought it is better to keep stocked food at all times.”

▷I had some canned food, and it was delicious.

 

About sticky note comments

People from many different backgrounds visited this exhibition, including people from Sendai City, as well as people from everywhere, including coastal areas, inland areas, inside and outside of Miyagi Prefecture, and inside and outside of Japan. There were also both adults and children, and these people left comments on sticky notes about what they remembered from seeing exhibited photos at the time of the disaster. Here, the original text comments that were left are posted without editing. Also, English text in gray are translations of Japanese texts.

 

 

Original Photo

“People Start Lining up for Sendai Asaichi (Morning Market) from Early in the Morning” *

 

March 16th, 2011
Aoba Ward, Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture
Recorded by: ABIKO67

 

*Source:
Photo Collection “3.11 Record of Memory—3.11 Disaster that Citizens Took as Record of Memory—”
Issued and provided by: 20th Century Archive Sendai

 

 

 

About “March 12: The First Meal After the Earthquake ––– When, Where, and What Did You Eat?”

The project is a participation style exhibition that exhibits photos of “meals” at the time of the disaster, such as photos related to emergency food distribution, grocery shopping, and people sharing meals at a table. Visitors were free to write sticky notes about what they remembered after seeing the photos and how they lived at the time. This exhibition was planned collaboratively by 3.11 Archive of Memories (at the time, called 20th Century Archive Sendai) and the center for remembering 3.11 (recorder311).
Please check out the [INDEX] page for the summary of each exhibited panel and utilization/application examples.