Series on Cultural Responses to 3.11
at Sophia University

invites you to our next talk

FUKUSHIMA COLOURS--Voices of Sustainability after March 11th 2011 Short film, reading and discussion

Elin Lindqvist, freelance journalist and translator Fukuda Yoshikazu, photographer

Friday, April 13th, 2012; 6:30-8pm
Sophia University, Yotsuya Campus
Bldg. 10, room 301
http://www.fla.sophia.ac.jp/about/location

Free and open to all
Lectures in English and Japanese

FUKUSHIMA COLOURS--Voices of sustainability after March 11th 2011

It will take years for the full extent of the nuclear crisis’ impact on the environment to become clear. Yet, already now, a year after the tsunami, it is possible to see some of the consequences that March 11th has had on people’s mind-sets when it comes to food, trust, and research about renewable energy sources. Do we hear the emergence of a common voice striving towards a more sustainable and ecological future? By interviewing individuals who were affected by the crisis in different ways, Elin Lindqvist and Fukuda Yoshikazu are interested in looking at how tradition has been reworked in the recovery process in ways that may contribute to sustainability. For them, it has been essential to record voices and images of people processing the crisis in different ways, in order to keep the discussion about what happened in Japan alive abroad. What happens in Fukushima will have and should have repercussions in the rest of the world, and there is therefore a common international responsibility to talk about the aftermath of the crisis.

Biographies

Elin Lindqvist (http://www.elinlindqvist.com/) was born in Tokyo in 1982 and currently lives in England. A freelance journalist, dramaturge and translator, she has worked and lived in over nine countries. She has a combined BA in Individualized Studies from Sophia University in Tokyo and New York University (NYU). She is a multilingual author, and has published three novels in Swedish (tokyo natt, 2002; Tre röda näckrosor, 2005 and Facklan, 2009). At the height of the nuclear crisis, when most foreign journalists were leaving Japan, Elin Lindqvist travelled to the devastated areas as a reporter for Sweden’s largest daily newspaper. She later returned in May to write about the reconstruction process and the continuing nuclear crisis, and then collaborated with Japanese photographer Yoshikazu Fukuda and journalist Yuko Ota throughout 2011 to see how people’s feelings and thoughts changed and developed. Their reportage book Fukushima Colours was published in Swedish and in English on March 11th 2012.

Yoshikazu Fukuda (http://www.kiichifukuda.com/) was born in Tokyo in 1981 and still lives and works in the city. He graduated from Tokyo College of Photography and has since then worked as a freelance photographer and filmmaker for many Japanese publications and TV. He has assisted Shingo Wakagi and contributes to magazines like "BRUTUS", "Numero", "Ecocolo", advertisements, and movies. He also regularly visits Mongolia to document the spreading of the desert from an ecological perspective.

SERIES ABSTRACT: Since March 11, 2011 artists, authors, musicians, filmmakers, professionals and amateurs, have responded in various ways to the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdown. These have ranged from choreographic demos, live and recorded performance and a wide range of media interventions, to fashion, fiction and music. Folk, pop or high culture, these have forced us to reexamine the role of cultural practices in the dynamic between the political and personal. In addition, there has been an enthusiastic revival of past cultural practices addressing related issues.

This series will feature small and informal workshops events over the course of the next year.

(Contact me off-list if you are interested in presenting and we will see if we can work up a suitable event:
dhslater[at]gmail.com)

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David H. Slater, Ph.D.
Faculty of Liberal Arts
Sophia University, Tokyo