About Our Partners

The Japan Disasters Digital Archive would not be possible without our partners. The JDA stores some materials itself, including tweets, testimonials, full-text English news articles, and news headlines, but also links to a large number of items such as archived websites, photos, videos, audio, and more. In all cases, this content is provided by both our users and partners, and we aim to bring together material from these various digital archives into a single search interface that provides access to all of these materials at once.
Not all partners are digital archives; some have created maps and instructional guides for the JDA. Our partners are thus a crucial part of our effort to provide and add value to digital content related to Japan’s 2011 disasters. Please learn more about our partners below.

311 Memories (National Institute of Informatics)
From online news (Yahoo! News) the 311 Memories project collects articles related to the disasters of March 11, 2011, and uses computer analysis and visualization to present a "quiet moving chronology" in order to look back at the flow of time after the earthquakes. 311 Memories has contributed hundreds of thousands of news article headlines to the JDA.

All 311 Comprehensive Archiving Project
Collaborating with citizens and local governments affected by the disaster as well as research institutions, universities, NPOs, volunteers, and commercial companies, the 311 Marugoto Archive offers an e-community platform to support disaster recovery and rebuilding efforts. The project aims to restore and regenerate a memory of the lost past by offering digitization of memory while recording the recovery process and valuable information resources produced for the purposes of disaster education, disaster prevention, and research as a whole.

Asahi Shimbun AJW 
The Asahi Shimbun AJW (Asia and Japan Watch) is the English-language digital version of The Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper. AJW offers in-depth coverage of Japan, China, Korea and other Asian nations. International scoops, in-depth analyses and features, plus daily news and many Op-ed articles constitute a highly useful news package. AJW also prides itself on its exhaustive coverage of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. It also offers extensive coverage on cultural trends and fashion as well as the latest in the world of anime and manga. The JDA contains thousands of full-text English news articles on the disasters from Asahi Shimbun AJW.

Fukushima Nuclear Accident Archive (FNAA)
Developed and operated by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), FNAA aims to support the scientific research and development activities toward the recovery from the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This system gathers and organizes information on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and related presentations from academic conferences.

The Great East Japan Earthquake Archives Fukushima
The Great East Japan Earthquake Archives Fukushima aims to index, preserve and make accessible the records of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011 and the aftermath in Fukushima. This archive is a collaborative project by organizations such as Fukushima Prefecture, Fukushima City, Keio University Graduate School, The Department of Media Design, Infocom, Hakuhodo, and The Japan Research Institute Limited.

Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA)
The Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) at Harvard University was established in 2006 to support research and teaching of all disciplines across the University with emerging geospatial technologies. The Center's goal has been to work with entities across the university to strengthen university-wide geographic information systems (GIS) infrastructure and services; provide a common platform for the integration of spatial data from diverse sources and knowledge from multiple disciplines; enable scholarly research that would use, improve, or study geospatial analysis techniques; and improve the ability to teach GIS and spatial analysis at all levels across the university. CGA has developed and powers the map view of items in the JDA.

HyperCities
Built on the Google Maps and Google Earth APIs, HyperCities Sendai provides active digital media space with Twitters and has accumulated interactive communications on the Great East Japan Earthquake along with geographical data. Hypercities has contributed to the archive hundreds of thousands of tweets related to the disasters.

Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a digital library founded in 1996 with the mission of universal access to human knowledge. Like a paper library, this archive provides free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public. The web content that is part of the JDA is captured and archived using Archive-It, a service from the Internet Archive. Archive-It allows institutions around the world to harvest and preserve collections of web content and create digital archives. The Internet Archive holds tens of thousands of websites related to the disasters for use in the JDA. You can view them here and also here.

Japanese Red Cross Society
The Japanese Red Cross Society has collected, processed, and analyzed information related to relief activities in Fukushima following the Great East Japan Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and made this content available through the Red Cross Nuclear Disaster Resource Center Digital Archives in October 2013. Records, documents, photographs, and videos are featured in the digital content.

Kahoku Shimpo Disaster Archive
In March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake caused grave damage to the furusato (hometown) of many from the Tohoku region. As one of the oldest local newspaper companies in the disaster-stricken area that has been distributing papers to Tohoku region since 1897, Kahoku Shimpo participates in the “2011 Great East Japan Disasters Archive” national project in order to pass down the story of this “millennial-scale” disaster to future generations. The Kahoku Shimpo Disaster Archive was launched in 2013 with technical assistance from the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) at Tohoku University. This archive collects, preserves, and organizes not only newspaper articles and photographs published by the newspaper itself, but also photographs and video footage generously contributed by the local residents. It is Kahoku Shimpo's wish that their archive be shared widely and aid in the generation of the stories and lessons learned from the disasters in 2011. Moreover, they hope to create an archive that is easy to use for all those who might utilize the records for disaster prevention and mitigation purposes.

metaLAB (at) Harvard
A hub for innovation in the arts, media, and humanities, metaLAB (at) Harvard is hosted at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. This lab is founded on the belief that some of the key research challenges and opportunities of the new millennium – not to mention crucial questions about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of culture and nature, and about democracy and social justice – transcend divisions between the arts, sciences, and humanities; between the academy, industry, and the public sphere; between theoretical and applied knowledge. metaLAB (at) Harvard has been a major partner in the conception and development of the JDA since its inception.

Michinoku Shinrokuden
As the leading national university in the region, Tohoku University launched a digital archiving project in 2011 following the Great East Japan Earthquake. Collaborating with government, industry, and academe, the project aims to build a comprehensive archive on disasters in the region, with a broad spectrum of memory, records, case studies. It aims to record the recovery and rebuilding process of the disaster and to disseminate information on a near real-time basis. The Michinoku Shinrokuden project contains a variety of ways to display photographs and other digital information about the disasters, with a special focus on innovative, interactive maps. Tohoku University has contributed tens of thousands of photographs from the Michinoku Shinrokuden project to the JDA.

North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC)
The North American Coordinating Council (NCC) provides access to information from and about Japan to support teaching, research, and general education. NCC’s website is a distribution hub for online resources and a platform for global collaboration. NCC has also developed a detailed online guide to using the JDA, which it hosts on its website.

National Diet Library of Japan (NDL)
The National Diet Library of Japan (NDL) was established in 1948 as the only national library in Japan. Under a system of comprehensive submission of works published within Japan, the library's collected materials are preserved for the long-term as national cultural heritage. The NDL offers its services to the National Diet, the judicial system, administrative agencies, and the Japanese people. The NDL also collects and archives a wide array of websites and other digital materials. In 2002, the NDL began harvesting selected websites with the permission of website owners. Following an amendment to the NDL Law, the NDL began harvesting all government websites in April 2010, later including the websites of local governments affected by the disasters in Eastern Japan. The JDA contains thousands of websites harvested in the NDL's web archiving efforts related to the disasters.

NHK
The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai), Japan’s only public broadcaster, introduced a radio service in 1925 and a television service in 1953. NHK is financed by fees paid by each household that owns a television set. This system enables the Corporation to maintain independence from any governmental and private organization, and ensures that the opinions of viewers and listeners are assigned top priority. More details can be found here. NHK has presented a series of TV programs and a digital archive service that collects materials related to the March 2011 disasters, including eyewitness testimonials and news clips. The JDA contains hundreds of news broadcast videos created and hosted by NHK in their digital archive.

Sakura on Project
The Sakura on Project regards the discovery, reorganization, and creation of every "story" as a great value looking toward the future. Using the planting of cherry trees (sakura) as one tool, the project produces a program and location for the important, long-term cultivation of the "stories" of both its participants and the areas they encounter. As a digital archive, it records, edits, transmits, and preserves the growth and expansion of the "new multiplicity of stories" born from this effort, for a better future. The JDA contains a variety of materials from the Sakura on Project, including photographs and videos of their activities with accompanying descriptions.

Sendai Mediatheque
In view of the beliefs that the disaster relief effort can be supported by information dissemination and that records of the disaster can be priceless assets for the future, Sendai Mediatheque (SMT), one of the cutting-edge information centers in Japan, has led a unique disaster recovery archiving project. In collaboration with citizens, experts, and SMT staff, this archive project focuses on recording the recovery and rebuilding process from the disaster while disseminating thoughts and information through various media, such as images, photos, sounds, and text. SMT has contributed a number of video and audio segments to the JDA.

Tokyo Foundation
The “101 Voices from Tohoku” Project (Hisaichi no Kikigaki 101) documents the lives and experiences of people affected by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in their own words. This project, employing a unique interviewing style called kikigaki, was launched in July 2011 jointly by the Tokyo Foundation and the Kyouzon no Mori Network, an NPO dedicated to promoting sustainable lifestyles. Over the course of a year, 47 interviewers—members of the two groups, along with students and other project members—visited 101 people living in evacuation centers and temporary homes to conduct one-on-one interviews. These accounts are told entirely in the first person and have been transcribed verbatim (in the local dialect). Focusing on people’s work, family life, and community activities prior to the March 2011 disasters, they also serve as an important archive of information on community life in areas whose historical records were washed away. Aiming to shed new light on the essential qualities of our society, they not only provide insights into how lives should be rebuilt in tsunami-affected areas, but also prompt those who were not affected to reflect on the way we live our lives and the values we hold. The JDA contains hundreds of full-text Japanese interviews with disaster victims conducted by the "101 Voices from Tohoku" Project.

Urayasu Disaster Archive
As part of the “Urayasu City Reconstruction Project,” the Urayasu Disaster Archive was launched in 2015 with the following purpose: (1) To document, preserve, and draw lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake; (2) To promote disaster preparedness education in schools; and (3) To support emergency disaster planning for the larger public.

Yahoo! JAPAN
This website is a damaged photo recovery project by Yahoo! JAPAN. Easy to use, this website includes various ways of search, such as by keyword, geographical point (e.g., latitude, longitude), time period (pre-disaster, post-disaster), type, prefecture, and community. Yahoo! JAPAN’s recent release of their free-of-charge API platform to access the Yahoo Photo Archiving Project on the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami may lead to the development of a more collaborative image archive for open access to society. Yahoo! JAPAN has contributed thousands of photographs of the disaster region to the JDA.

Hidenori Watanave (East Japan Earthquake Archive)
The East Japan Earthquake Archive is a pluralistic digital archive for visualizing and telling the real state of the damage situation of the East Japan Earthquake using a digital earth. On this site, produced by Hidenori Watanave (Professor, Graduate School of the University of Tokyo), users can also browse all the data along with the time progress after the occurrence of The Earthquake disaster.