e2 the sunday gleaner, december 4, 2016 | it takes a

SENDAI, Japan:

MARCH 11, 2011, isstill embedded inShinichi Takeda’s

mind. It was the day when theearthquake and tsunami struckSendai city. Five and a halfyears on when he speaks, itseems as if the disaster struckyesterday.

Like the tens of thousands inthe Miyagi prefecture whoendured physical and emotionaltrauma, the head of disaster risk

reduction, education section,Kahoku Shimpo PublishingCompany, says he learnt avaluable lesson that fatefulafternoon.

Their newspaper had failed toeducate the population to handledisasters of this magnitude.

“It is not enough and ineffec-tive if we inform our readersabout the happening at the timewhen a disaster strikes,” Takedasaid. “We need to give ourreaders constant information onhow to prepare and be safe.

“If there was a sustained effortto educate our readers and thewider population,” Takeda said,“the loss to human life would

have been considerably less.”The 2011 earthquake and

tsunami claimed 20,000 lives.There are 2,500 peopleunaccounted for, and 27 vendorsof Kahoku Shimpo also died.

Takeda and his staff at Sendai’slargest daily lived through theearthquake and the resultanttsunami to ensure that the news-paper was delivered to their sub-scribers the next morning.

“We suffered extensivedamage,” Takeda said. “Theoffice building was inundated,ceilings had fallen, and therewere cracks on the wall. Twentyseven of our news vendors anddistribution staff lost their lives.”Two of the paper’s branchoffices were swept away and thesystems were shut down.

Two editorial staff drove 300km to a newspaper inNiigata 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 unprecedentedscale of the disaster, theemotional price was high.Takeda, who was the chiefReporter then, stayed in theoffice for a month.

Post the tsunami, thenewspaper set up a disaster risk-reduction unit with a mandate toeducate the people.

The realisation that theyfailed on several fronts cameafter Kahoku Shimpo surveyed

people living in shelters onwhether the newspaper storieshad helped readers to be pre-pared for disaster — 72 per centsaid no.

The newspaper took the leadand reached out to thecommunities to prepare them,organising seminars in schoolsand companies. Around 60organisations and 120 people arecurrently involved, Takeda said.

SHARING EXPERIENCES“The workshops serve as an

opportunity for people to sharetheir experiences,” he said.These interactions, he said, givepeople a chance speak, and localnewspapers are best suited forthis role. His newspaper alsoorganises round-table meetingswith universities, corporatebodies and media organisations.These interactions are thenpublished.

One elderly reader, he shared,managed to save his life bygoing to an elevated highwayafter recalling an article he hadread in Kahoku Shimpo advis-ing people to move to higherground when a tsunami warningis given.

“It feels good to hear suchstories,” Takeda said. “We wouldlike to save more lives byeducating people.”

Life goes on in Sendai,bustling, bubbling, and rollingunder the psychedelic signageand vibrant shopping plazas.

Sitting in his offices, Takeda saidmedia has a larger role to playthan news dissemination, and itshould be the mandate and onusof newsrooms to turn their ener-gies to educating their readers.

“It is important to be proactiveand make your readers beprepared should a disasterstrike,” he said. “It is a great painto see people lose their lives.

“I don’t want this to happenagain,” Takeda said.

Shimpo Publishing isSendai’s largest circulated daily,with their morning edition

reaching 450,000 and theevening paper selling 70,000copies.

“The disaster is not over forus,” he said.

nThe visit to Japan was part ofthe ‘Pacific Islands and CaribbeanJournalists’ Programme’organised by the Tokyo-basedAssociation for Promotion ofInternational Cooperation(APIC), with support from theForeign Press Center, Japan.Email: amitabh.sharma@hotmail.com

THE SUNDAY GLEANER, DECEMBER 4, 2016 E2 | ARTS & EDUCATION

POSTCARD FROM JAPAN

PHOTOS BY FLOYD K.TAKEUCHI/ WAKA PHOTOS

Shinichi Takeda of the Kahouku Shimbun in Sendai,Japan.

AmitabhSharma

It takes a newsroom to educate

Second-grade students at Shichigo Elementary School drop to the floor and go into a protective posture to show whatthey would do during an earthquake.