Centre for Japanese Studies — Museums of themselves: disaster, heritage, and Japan's future by Dr. Andrew Littlejohn (2022年3月11日)

After being introduced by Dr. Hannah Osborne, Dr. Andrew Littlejohn made two points of clarification. When he discusses heritage, he is not using the general reference associated with the word, rather he is using it in as bunkasai, as a thing which has official designation. The second point was that you cannot simply just use this terminology, by using ‘museumification’. This means attempting to place something in an intangible or tangible space to preserve it.

This event was held the same day as the eleventh anniversary of 3/11—the earthquake off Tokoku, the subsequent tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Dr. Littlejohn made reference to the war in Ukraine and how heritage would be important in the aftermath of a different kind of tragedy.

He began by looking at how ‘heritage’—in his use of the phrase—was used in the aftermath of the earthquake, which was so big that it slowed the rotation of the Earth. In the period after the disaster, loss of life was of course of the most important aspect but bunkasai was also of vital concern, with the damage or loss of sites, buildings and the intangible, such as matsuri or forms of performance, here related to folk art (minzakugaino). This was something known as ‘heritage at risk’ and is a thing which can apply to any event, from an earthquake to a war.

Dr. Littlejohn argued that this has sped up the process of museumification, saying that we only tend to protect something that has been threatened. There is, he explained, an intimate relationship between risk and heritage. By this logic, the Tōhoku region was already primed prior to 3/11 but these trends were accelerated due to the disaster.

He suggested museumification has assisted people with ‘getting back on their feet’ however he also wanted to discuss how this ideal also caused issues with hollow promises, such as full restoration.

After explaining the origins of his research, which began a year after 3/11, in a town called Minamisanriku in Miyagi prefecture, Dr. Littlejohn noted that while debris had been cleared, many buildings were still collapsed or just left as they were, post-disaster. He showed an image of the office building was, the Disaster Prevention Centre, a place supposed to be of safety but where fifty people died when the tsunami swept over the town, leaving just a shell behind.

He related a story regarding a local lion dance and the importance of how, despite losing their costumes and equipment, people used slippers and other items to make a mask and then performed their dance in a hotel. Dr. Littlejohn then explained how 3/11 began a new process where funding could be given to groups who weren’t registered as official forms of local heritage, to replace items, clothing and equipment lost because of the disaster.

Citing several events from his time in Japan doing fieldwork, Dr. Littlejohn returned to Minamisanriku and began discussing how people would leave flowers, erect altars or otherwise remember the dead. This eventually turned to commitees who decided which locations needed to be preserved for historical reasons and to remember the disaster and its effect on life in Tōhoku.

His key point was that, on one hand, the locals wanted to put these horrible events behind them, because to remember was just too painful, juxtaposed with a desire for museumification so that people who came from outside the area, or even the country, would do to learn about the events and understand what happened.

He concluded that museumification has benefited, both by helping locals rebuild or continue their own forms of heritage, but also ‘introduces tensions’ by turning places or experiences into commodities which can sold to tourists. Dr. Hannah Osborne returned to mediate questions form the audience before concluding the event, which can be viewed below: