Professor SAKURAI Aiko of the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies has a unique background, pursuing a career in international cooperation before expanding her research to include disaster education. While keeping a focus on teachers and the classroom, she has been exploring the development of disaster education where schools can protect children’s lives, and has been involved in implementing and supporting efforts in the field. We asked her about how disaster education has changed after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the Great East Japan Earthquake, and how she hopes to spread the initiatives to the world.
How did you become involved in disaster education?
Sakurai:
I was in my first year working for Keidanren (Japan Business Federation) at the time of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and I just remember feeling so sad and powerless, being unable to help. I later went on to work at the World Bank, and then a development consulting firm and others as a specialist in international development.
The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011 prompted me to become involved in the recovery and support activities of the international NGO Save the Children Japan. Save the Children organizations all over the world had received huge donations to help the people of Japan, and after contemplating how we could help children in disaster areas in terms of education, we provided support to the schools there, according to their needs.
Initially, as schools were being reopened, we provided children with school bags, stationery, and school bus services between the temporary housing units and the schools. This gradually shifted towards supporting learning activities, club activities, and scholarship programs as progress was made in the recovery and reconstruction phases of the schools in the affected areas.
A year after the earthquake, we began to receive requests from schools asking us to help them with disaster education. We considered what kind of support we could provide and contemplated using the disaster education package that Save the Children had accumulated. But it was difficult to apply the program to the situation in Japan, and we felt the need for something more suited to the circumstances in areas devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake.
The exercise of creating recovery maps to instill pride in their community
How did you go about developing the disaster education program?
Sakurai:
Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture had asked us to work together on developing a disaster education program for children after the devastation of the major earthquake. It was actually a difficult time for Ishinomaki City as they were struggling to address the tragedy of Okawa Elementary School, where many children had died. But they told us that they wanted to work on disaster education with an eye on the future, and so we decided to help.
When developing the new disaster education program, in addition to keeping past initiatives and including lessons learned from the 2011 tsunami, we also considered what would be important during the reconstruction period for children who had experienced devastating loss. With the cooperation of teachers in the classrooms, we formed a team with experts in earthquake engineering, geography and other fields to work on our shared vision of developing the exercise of creating a “recovery map.” We began the activity in 2012 at Kazuma Elementary School in Ishinomaki City, and this went on to be continued by fourth-grade students every year.
We were inspired by the initiatives of Itayado Elementary School in Kobe City during the recovery after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, where they had organized town walks and created town maps for their school district. Usually, town walks with the objective of disaster management are about looking for potential hazards around us. But with our recovery maps, we held many discussions with school teachers and counselors about how we could design the town walks to help children think positively about their community being rebuilt, after surviving a tsunami.
For example, entire houses were swept away by the tsunami, and vacant lots were left after the debris was removed. We referred to those areas as places that are “ready for reconstruction,” talking about them in a positive light as locations ready for new houses. With the recovery maps, the children walked around the town and recorded the progress made as the community was being rebuilt in their school district. Seven years after the disaster, we conducted a questionnaire with the junior high school students who had participated in creating the maps when they had been in elementary school, and found that they thought very highly of the exercise. They said that the initiative had enhanced their desire to help rebuild their community.
After starting with Kazuma Elementary School, Ishinomaki City introduced the recovery map initiative to other elementary and junior high schools as a disaster education program. Expanding pilot activities to broader areas is an aspect that is also important in international cooperation efforts. Our experiences with Ishinomaki City showed us that, even with the same tsunami, the extent of damage and recovery stages can vary with each school district because of the differences in the terrain and land use, and that it is necessary to address multiple hazards besides tsunamis, such as flooding and landslides, to really make disaster education an effective initiative.
As we hoped for the broader implementation of a disaster education program that incorporated the characteristics of the potential natural disasters of each region, our recovery and disaster management map program evolved into classes using topographical maps, hazard maps, and other material. The children questioned why the tsunami reached different heights even within the same school district, and began to learn how distances from the sea, altitudes, natural levees, and other land features made all the difference.
Providing support that can help teachers and staff understand disaster management information and make decisions in disaster situations
How has disaster education changed since the Great East Japan Earthquake?
Sakurai:
One of the major challenges posed by the Great East Japan Earthquake was what schools could do to protect children in the event of a heightened risk of a natural disaster during school hours. In the Okawa Elementary School lawsuit filed by families of the children killed in the 2011 tsunami, the court ruling clearly stated that schools have an obligation to protect children. It reaffirmed that schools must be prepared by creating crisis management manuals, conducting evacuation drills, and improving the teaching staff’s disaster response skills. Disaster education is not only for children, it is also for school administrators, teachers, guardians, and residents of the local community.
After the Great East Japan Earthquake, Miyagi Prefecture was the first in Japan to implement the disaster management officer system, where teachers play a central role in the disaster management at their school. So, each school in Miyagi Prefecture now has one disaster management officer in place. In 2019, training programs began for the disaster management officers at schools in Ishinomaki City to understand the land features and disaster risks of the school district, using maps. This then developed into training programs about how to conduct emergency evacuations when students are at school. We believe that teachers and staff being able to make the decision to evacuate to safety in a timely manner, when there is a heightened risk of a tsunami, flooding, landslide, or other disaster near the school or in the school district, will lead to achieving highly effective disaster management at schools.
Spreading disaster education initiatives from Hyogo Prefecture and Kobe City to the world
Hyogo Prefecture and Kobe City experienced the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. What do you think of their role in the field of disaster education?
Sakurai:
Hyogo Prefecture and Kobe City’s initiatives after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake became the foundation for the international development of disaster education. Their initiatives address issues of how to protect ourselves from earthquakes, how to survive the immediate aftermath which is the toughest period, how to proceed with recovery efforts based on connections with neighbors and communities, and how to pass on the experience to the next generation. They have developed a disaster education package that includes all of these elements, and this is being spread not only throughout Japan but also all over the world.
Teams of teachers and staff have also been sent to disaster areas not only in Japan but also around the world to support local efforts in reopening their schools after natural disasters. Many NGOs and international organizations that address disasters are also based in Hyogo Prefecture. Hyogo and Kobe are global leaders with their experience and know-how accumulated over the past 30 years since the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and I believe that this role should continue in the future.
What role would you like to play in the field of disaster education going forward?
Sakurai:
Disaster management is an interdisciplinary field involving experts in science, engineering, and many other disciplines for each of the hazards of rivers, landslides, earthquakes, or tsunamis. There are also experts in the humanities and social sciences who look at disaster information, evacuations, and other aspects to study the impacts that disasters may have on society as well as human behavior.
As such, I believe there is a role that I can play, where I can make use of my background. I started my career specializing in education in developing countries, before expanding my work to include the research and practice of disaster education. First of all, I believe it is important to open up access across disciplines specializing in disaster management. It is also crucial to encourage two-way communication between the experts and municipalities who provide information and the people who receive that information by eliminating any barriers between them. In particular, I hope to promote disaster management initiatives that are centered on schools and take a comprehensive view of policies, plans, and actual practice in schools and communities.
I also hope to focus efforts on training disaster education specialists at the Kobe University Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, educating not only Japanese students but also international students. I hope international students will be able to study disaster education and disaster preparedness initiatives that enable people to protect the lives of their loved ones, and then take what they have learned back to their countries to enhance the resilience of their communities.
Resume
Received her Master of Laws in political science from Keio University in 1994, before working for Keidanren, the World Bank, and others. Received a Ph.D. from the Kobe University Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies. After working at Save the Children Japan, she became an associate professor at the Tohoku University International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) in 2014, and a professor in 2020. In 2024, she also became a professor at the Kobe University Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, while also a professor at IRIDeS.
