At the Creative Reconstruction: Vision Formulation 2, 4th Session, Shuji Akagi, a high school art teacher, was invited and he gave a talk titled, “The Fukushima I Saw”.
His talk was centered on the photographs he has been taking since immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake and about the city of Fukushima. Because Fukushima is located only 64 km from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station, the radiation dose is high and decontamination works are being carried out in many places. In Akagi’s photographs, there are many scenes of decontamination works going on right next to people commuting to school and work.
He said that, ever since the catastrophic earthquake, he himself and people around him are exercising a form of “Masking out of consideration for others”. People have not been able to express their true feelings in fear of hurting someone else, and it is something that every single citizen seems to be doing for one reason or another. He decided to let that all come out. Akagi’s lecture inspired us to think about methods of and the meaning of “to convey”. (Akagi)