• Date: Friday, November 16 - Saturday, November 17, 2012
• Venue: Conference Room 4, National Museum of Ethnology
• Language: Japanese / English (Simultaneous Translation)

Purpose

The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011, devastated the region, and reconstruction strategy plans have hardly been implemented even now. Although it is desperately needed to accelerate various reconstruction works in the damaged area by mobilizing nation-wide resources,  the reconstructing process has not shown much progress due to political situation thrown into confusion and difficulties in securing financial resources. At the same time, capabilities of disaster management for the next large scale disaster should be further enhanced immediately. Taking these issues into consideration, we are going to organize an international symposium entitled “Catastrophes and Constructing Communities”, which is to be held at National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, on the 16th and 17 the November, 2012.  Through the symposium, we would like to discuss the ways of (re-)construction of communities after large scale disasters by paying attention to various experiences both inside and outside Japan.  The issue is to be approached from the following three angles: “the roles local media play on the occasion of large–scale disasters”, “significance of rehabilitation of cultural heritage in disasters”, and “the ways of transmitting memories of disaster in communities”.  
We do believe the symposium will contribute to the promotion of awareness of disaster prevention/reduction.