IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--A group of volunteers has been spray-painting colorful flower and fish graffiti on coastal levees and elsewhere to brighten up the city devastated by last year’s earthquake and tsunami.
IWAKI, Fukushima Prefecture--A group of volunteers has been spray-painting colorful flower and fish graffiti on coastal levees and elsewhere to brighten up the city devastated by last year’s earthquake and tsunami.
“We want to cheer up people with delightful paintings,” said restaurateur Takashi Katsube, 40, who leads the project. “We hope they can smile again.”
Katsube and two others spray-painted cherry blossoms and sunflowers on a coastal levee on June 2.
The graffiti project, “Gareki ni Hana wo Sakasemasho” (Let flowers bloom on rubble), started in July, four months after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011.
Graffiti of flowers, fish and other motifs have been completed in about 50 locations, which include former sites of houses washed away by the tsunami.