I don’t want to talk about the earthquake, there is nothing I can say about it

Twenty years have passed since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. Being attentive to the feelings of those who lost their closest friends and relatives, many people were not able to speak about their own emotional scars and anxieties.

Atsushi Fujii is one of such people. He was in the second year of high school when the earthquake occurred. He felt a big shake while sleeping in bed. The wall clock fell, and its surface glass was broken. A wooden ornament on the bookshelf dropped near his head. It was completely dark. At that moment, he didn’t recognize how severe the situation was, and just wondered, “Do we have school today?”

I was living in a family of five – my parents, two younger sisters and me – in a hillside area in Nada Ward, Kobe City. As our apartment house stood on solid ground, both my family and the building itself suffered no damage. So, even after twenty years, I somewhat felt I was not qualified to talk about the earthquake.

I still can’t forget that scene

When dawn broke, he opened the window and looked to the south. Smoke was rising here and there. It was a scene he had never seen before.

We were soon able to get in touch with my paternal grandmother, who was living in the neighborhood. Then we found smoke rising in the area along the JR line near Nada Station, where my maternal grandmother and aunt lived. My father and I rushed there by car. As we went down the hill, the situation became more and more awful … I still can’t forget that scene. My grandmother’s house was leaning, but both my grandmother and aunt were not hurt, having evacuated outside in blankets. Just afterwards, a fire broke out in the neighborhood and my grandmother’s house was completely burnt down.

I didn’t really know what it was to “rebuild our life”

Since Mr. Fujii’s family house and its neighborhood was on solid ground, power was soon restored. They switched on the TV, and finally understood what was happening. They were at a loss for words.

After the earthquake, seven of my family members, including my grandmother and aunt, lived huddled in the apartment house. We secured water for drinking and washing from the river next to the building, and my relatives brought us relief goods. I don’t remember having led a very inconvenient life. I was a high school student at that time, and maybe I didn’t really know what it was to “rebuild our life.”

Cell phones were not common in those days. With a student list in my hand, I traveled along the National Highway Route 2, on a borrowed bicycle, in order to confirm the safety of my friends and junior fellows. When school was resumed after two months or so, I learned that one senior and one junior in my club, two or three other students in the school, and one teacher, had lost their lives. All of the students in my grade were alive.

Photo: Albums showing memories of the brass band club at high school

I just wanted to play music with the club members

He was the president of the brass band club at Hyogo Prefectural Kobe High School. His desire to play music grew daily. Two months after the earthquake, on March 11, the club was able to hold a concert at an elementary school in Nada Ward, Kobe. Since the gym was used as an evacuation center, the performance was held in the schoolyard. They played pieces that were familiar to many people, such as the theme song of “My Neighbor Totoro.”

We couldn’t use the gym, so we practiced in the science and physics laboratories. All of us, including juniors who lost their peers, worked hard. Some people said we should not be doing such a thing, but club members voluntarily gathered, simply wishing to play together. Maybe we also thought that we could make someone happy.

In the summer of that year, the brass band club participated in the Kansai regional tournament. The school excursion was cancelled, and instead they took a field trip to Kyoto by bus after they advanced to the third grade.

So my memory about the earthquake is connected to my high school days. After graduating from high school, I commuted to a university in Osaka from my parents’ house. Then I moved to Yao City in Osaka Prefecture, when I began working. My life was deeply associated with Osaka for about ten years, so I don’t know much about Kobe after I came of age. I have always felt a kind of diffidence for not having experienced the death of a close person.

Photo: Exhibition tracing the 100-year history of Mouri Mark, established in 1914

To take over an irreplaceable, long-established shop with a 100-year history in Kobe

Mr. Fujii started to work in Osaka as an engineer, and got married in the same year. In 2005, his first daughter was born. However, he soon fell sick and had to take leave of absence for about one month. When he was wondering what to do for the future, Mouri Mark – a shop run by his wife’s family – entered his thoughts.

I was born and brought up in Kobe, and I had vaguely thought that I would return to Kobe someday. My wife was one of the three sisters, and Mouri Mark had no successors. So my wife’s father totally welcomed me. At that time, I wasn’t aware that Mouri Mark had a 100-year history. I just thought that the shop in Sannomiya had been, and would be there for a long time. But at least I can say that I have decided to run the shop with my own will.

Photo: Sannomiya Center-gai Shopping Street in Kobe, where Mouri Mark is located

The idea of Ikumen spreads the culture of praise across Japan

Mr. Fujii returned to Kobe, and had two more daughters, in 2008 and 2010. When his third daughter was born, he launched the project “Kobe Ikumen Award” with the goal of creating a society in three years where everyone takes the idea of Ikumen for granted.

Mouri Mark sells trophies. The project began simply with my ideas: “If there are more opportunities to praise someone, then maybe the opportunities to use trophies will increase as well” and “Praising someone is a good thing. I hope that the culture of praise will prevail.”

When I was looking for ideas for a self-produced awarding ceremony, I had my third daughter and began to work for shorter hours for a month. I left the office one hour earlier and went to the nursery school to pick up my elder daughters. The routine of finishing my work one hour earlier, coming back home, riding my bicycle and picking up my daughters was much tougher than I had thought. Then one day, I read a newspaper article saying that over 80% of men take paternal leave in northern European nations (about 1% in Japan). I was inspired by the sentence at the end of the article: “Why not hold an Ikumen Award or something?” I thought, “Yes! This is it!”

Around that time, he learned from other fathers who were actively involved in parenting, just like him, that they felt somewhat unsettled at the way mothers looked at them when they went to the nursery school to pick up their children. The knowledge that other fathers also felt uncomfortable was another factor behind the launch of the Ikumen Award.



Kobe to be the pioneer in the Ikumen culture

He always felt that there were too many negative topics surrounding Kobe after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, the most recent one being the outbreak of new swine flu in 2009. He wanted to spread new ideas and lifestyle from Kobe, a positive town with many “first-in-Japan” stories about events and cultures.

Though the project name had “Kobe,” I didn’t mean to collect Ikumen’s episodes only from Kobe; I intended to collect such episodes from all over Japan, and output their lifestyle from Kobe.

On Father’s Day in June 2010, the “Kobe Ikumen Award” event was held in Sannomiya Center-gai Shopping Street in Kobe. Inviting Ikumen-related people from all over the country, the organizer certified all of the 141 applicants as “Kobe Ikumen” and held an awarding ceremony for them. The event was introduced with a photo in the local newspaper, the Kobe Shimbun, and also received TV coverage. Since then, the award has been covered across many media.

2010 was the year when the revised Act on Childcare Leave and Caregiver Leave came into effect. At the end of the year, the word “Ikumen” was included in the top 10 list of the Buzzwords-of-the-year contest. The Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare started the Ikumen Project, and similar events were held nationwide. Kobe was the pioneer in the Ikumen movement.

The word “Ikumen” refers to all men who watch over children

When we focus only on fathers involved in parenting, mothers tend to be left unnoticed. In addition, there are children who cannot live with their parents for family reasons. For these reasons, he decided to call all men who are involved in parenting “Ikumen,” not limited to fathers.

Five years have passed since I began this project. The word Ikumen has become popular, but was focused on as a trend that has nothing to do with families having no children. To have the project serve not only as an awarding opportunity for fathers, but also as an opportunity to interact with children, I changed the name of the event to “Kobe Ikumen Day” in 2013. I believe that Kobe will be an even better place if everyone naturally watches over children, whether they are their own children or not.

Photo: T-shirt designed by Mr. Fujii, with an abundance of love for Kobe

As a citizen to create the future of Kobe, I want to pass down my message to children

At present, the proportion of Kobe citizens who have experienced the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake is less than 60%. What was considered as a common experience is becoming less easily shared.

Through various activities, I hope to create an environment where everyone – including those living or working in Kobe – thinks that the city is a good place. I feel again that the 20th anniversary of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake should be considered a good opportunity for this.
As a citizen to create the future of Kobe, I will keep on thinking what I can do, and how everyone can be committed to this dream. I hope that I can contribute to Kobe, even a little, so that I can say “I love Kobe!” from the bottom of my heart.

(Photographed by Kyoko Kataoka, interviewed and written by Kaori Nikaido)