Women who survived the 2011 disaster in the Tohoku region are holding a photo exhibition in Tokyo that has enabled them to pour out their emotions.
Women who survived the 2011 disaster in the Tohoku region are holding a photo exhibition in Tokyo that has enabled them to pour out their emotions.
Titled “Women tell of the Great East Japan Earthquake through photos and voices,” the exhibition features 43 pictures by 32 women taken from immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami struck on March 11, 2011, to February this year.
The exhibition is being held at MC FOREST in Tokyo’s Marunouchi district and runs through March 16.
Each photo is accompanied with a caption expressing the photographers’ thoughts and experiences.
“Many women could not reveal their inner feelings because of their family care and their responsibility in the community,” said Tomoko Yunomae, an organizing group member. “They breathed out their thoughts, shared their anger and shed tears.”
The photographers include those who live in provisional housing in the hardest-hit prefectures of Fukushima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures and others who were evacuated due to the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The photos include streets left idle during reconstruction work, provisional housing, the ocean, and fields exposed to radioactive fallout.
The photographers met eight to 10 times to discuss the captions.
One of the photographers, who lives on the coast of Iwate Prefecture, has kept watch over provisional housing residents.
The woman, in her 60s, took a photo of potted flowers crowding the entrance of a provisional housing complex in September 2012.
The caption quotes the words of a resident: “I purchase flowers every time I shed tears.”