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THE SUNDAY GLEANER, DECEMBER 4, 2016 | ARTS & EDUCATIONPOSTCA R D F R O M J A PAN

It takes a newsroom to educate
AmitabhSharma
SENDAI, Japan:
ARCH 11, 2011, isstill embedded in
Shinichi Takeda’s
mind. It was the day when theearthquake and tsunami struck
Sendai city. Five and a halfyears on when he speaks, it
seems as if the disaster struck
yesterday.
Like the tens of thousands inthe Miyagi prefecture who
endured physical and emotional
trauma, the head of disaster risk

Mreduction, education section,
Kahoku Shimpo Publishing
Company, says he learnt avaluable lesson that fatefulafternoon.
Their newspaper had failed toeducate the population to handle
disasters of this magnitude.
“It is not enough and ineffective if we inform our readers
about the happening at the time
when a disaster strikes,” Takeda
said. “We need to give ourreaders constant information on
how to prepare and be safe.
“If there was a sustained effort
to educate our readers and thewider population,” Takeda said,“the loss to human life would

Second-grade students at Shichigo Elementary School drop to the floor and go into a protective posture to show what
they would do during an earthquake.
have been considerably less.”
The 2011 earthquake andtsunami claimed 20,000 lives.
There are 2,500 people
unaccounted for, and 27 vendorsof Kahoku Shimpo also died.
Takeda and his staff at Sendai’slargest daily lived through theearthquake and the resultant
tsunami to ensure that the newspaper was delivered to their subscribers the next morning.
“We suffered extensivedamage,” Takeda said. “The
office building was inundated,ceilings had fallen, and there
were cracks on the wall. Twenty
seven of our news vendors anddistribution staff lost their lives.”
Two of the paper’s branch
offices were swept away and thesystems were shut down.
Two editorial staff drove
300km to a newspaper in
Niigata on the western coast ofJapan to plan and design thepages for the March 12 editionof the Kahoku Shimpo.
It was a logistics nightmare,and given the unprecedented
scale of the disaster, theemotional price was high.
Takeda, who was the chief
Reporter then, stayed in theoffice for a month.
Post the tsunami, thenewspaper set up a disaster riskreduction unit with a mandate toeducate the people.
The realisation that theyfailed on several fronts cameafter Kahoku Shimpo surveyed

people living in shelters on
whether the newspaper stories
had helped readers to be prepared for disaster — 72 per centsaid no.
The newspaper took the leadand reached out to thecommunities to prepare them,organising seminars in schools
and companies. Around 60
organisations and 120 people arecurrently involved, Takeda said.

SHARING EXPERIENCES“The workshops serve as anopportunity for people to share
their experiences,” he said.
These interactions, he said, give
people a chance speak, and local
newspapers are best suited forthis role. His newspaper alsoorganises round-table meetings
with universities, corporate
bodies and media organisations.
These interactions are thenpublished.
One elderly reader, he shared,
managed to save his life bygoing to an elevated highway
after recalling an article he hadread in Kahoku Shimpo advising people to move to higher
ground when a tsunami warningis given.
“It feels good to hear suchstories,” Takeda said. “We would
like to save more lives byeducating people.”
Life goes on in Sendai,
bustling, bubbling, and rollingunder the psychedelic signage
and vibrant shopping plazas.

PHOTOS BY FLOYD K. TAKEUCHI/ WAKA PHOTOS

Shinichi Takeda of the Kahouku Shimbun in Sendai,
Japan.
Sitting in his offices, Takeda said
media has a larger role to playthan news dissemination, and it
should be the mandate and onusof newsrooms to turn their energies to educating their readers.
“It is important to be proactive
and make your readers beprepared should a disasterstrike,” he said. “It is a great pain
to see people lose their lives.
“I don’t want this to happen
again,” Takeda said.
Shimpo Publishing is
Sendai’s largest circulated daily,
with their morning edition

reaching 450,000 and theevening paper selling 70,000
copies.
“The disaster is not over forus,” he said.
nThe visit to Japan was part ofthe ‘Pacific Islands and Caribbean
Journalists’ Programme’organised by the Tokyo-based
Association for Promotion ofInternational Cooperation(APIC), with support from theForeign Press Center, Japan.
Email: amitabh.sharma@hotmail.com