2024-11-6 “Records” and “memories” that should be preserved by earthquake archives―The FY2024 Great East Japan Earthquake Symposium will be held on January 11, 2025

The National Diet Library and the International Research Institute of Disaster Science at Tohoku University (IRIDeS) [external link] will cosponsor a symposium on the Great East Japan Earthquake Archive to be held on Saturday, January 11, 2025. Interested parties will be able either to attend the event at Tohoku University in Sendai, Miyagi, or to watch a live video stream online.

In the areas affected by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake that occurred in January 2024, recovery and reconstruction activities are underway, and new efforts are underway to build an archive of earthquake-related materials. On the other hand, January 2025 will mark 30 years since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, 20 years since the Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake, and more than 10 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake. During this period, various earthquake archives have been constructed and operated. However, with the passage of time, some archives are in danger of extinction, and the essential issues of the significance and role of earthquake archives are now being questioned once again.

In this symposium, we will invite researchers who have made research achievements in earthquake archives in recent years. We will discuss the significance and roles of earthquake disaster archives and the “records” and “memories” that should be preserved, expanding the topics to include the history of earthquake archives since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and the position of disasters in society and history.

For details, please see the Events page (in Japanese) on the National Diet Library Great East Japan Earthquake Archive website.