LibGuides: Guides to the Digital Archive of Japan's 2011 Disasters: Home

Context

On Friday March 11th, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck a wide area of the northeast region of Japan, followed by a huge tsunami that inundated the region and flooded the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear plant. The combined disasters are perhaps the most major event to occur in Japan since the end of World War II. Since the disasters occurred thousands of voluteers have worked in Northern Japan and groups around the world are donating funds and expertise to assist in the recovery. NCC is working with organizations in Japan, the US and elsewhere to assist in documentation of the disasters, in data recovery, and in amassing a visual record of the region before, during and after the disasters occurred.

Related Events

Doing Digital Scholarship in Japanese Studies an NCC a Workshop, November 6-7, 2015, Center for Government and International Studies, Harvard University

Contact Us

For all comments and questions on this webpage, contact Katherine Matsuura at kmatsuura at fas dot harvard dot edu

Introduction to the Japan Disaster Archive

The Digital Archive of Japan’s 2011 Disasters (JDA) is an online portal to digital materials documenting the cascading series of natural and man-made disasters that began in Japan on March 11, 2011. The JDA is a partnership of organizations including several terabits of data contained in Internet Archive, photographs archived by Yahoo! Japan, many layers of maps and and videos, tweets collected by Hypercities, testimonials from victims and visitors to the site, and much more. The archive interface does not store copies of the data, rather it seamlessly links digital materials archived by partner projects, allowing you to search, view, and sort items across separate archives and collections.

In addition to being a permanent repository for digital records of the disaster, the archive is an interactive platform for teaching and research, constantly growing through direct user participation. Visitors are encouraged to freely contribute their own material to the archive, and to create individual “collections” of data surrounding a given theme or topic, sharing those individually curated collections with others. The archive seeks to become a collaborative, public space open to all who wish to relate memories, deposit data, teach and learn through the site.

This LibGuide was created as a window into the Digital Archive of Japan’s 2011 Disasters to help users sift through the many millions of items in the digital collections, by suggesting points of access for students, teachers, researchers, policy makers, and members of the general public interested in specific topics.

As of April 2015, the archive links to:

170,019 images

405 videos

41 audio files

834,617 tweets

15,536 PDF documents

4,017 full-text news articles

49,777 websites

975 testimonials

730 broadcast videos

253 collections

383,295 news headlines

A total of 1,459,667 items.

(numbers are constantly in flux as new items are added to the archive)

Structure of the Archive

JDA Organization Chart

The Digital Archive of Japan's 2011 Disasters (JDA) is built on a network of users and contributors, as well as partner organizations that provide access to their web content. The JDA stores some material itself, including tweets, testimonials, full-text English news articles, and news headlines, but also acts as a portal site that links to a large number of items such as archived websites, photos, videos, audio, and more. We aim to bring together material from the digital archives, both in Japan and the U.S., in one search interface that provides simultaneous access to these diverse resources. Not all partners are digital archives; others have created maps and instructional guides for the JDA. Our partners are thus a crucial part of our effort to provide and add value to digital content related to Japan’s 2011 disasters.

Click on the image below to expand view.

Japan Disaster Archive Partner Institutions

311 Marugoto Archive (All 311 Comprehensive Archiving Project)
Collaborating with citizens and local governments affected by the disaster as well as research institutions, universities, NPOs, volunteers, and commercial companies, 311 Marugoto Archive offers an e-community platform to support disaster recovery and rebuilding efforts. The project aims to restore and regenerate a memory of the lost past by offering digitization of memory while recording the recovery process and valuable information resources produced in the process for future disaster education, disaster prevention and research as a whole.
311 Memories (National Institute of Informatics)
From online news (Yahoo! News) the 311 Memories project collects articles related to the disasters of March 11, 2011, and uses computer analysis and visualization to present a "quiet moving chronology" in order to look back at the flow of time after the earthquakes. 311 Memories has contributed hundreds of thousands of news article headlines to the JDArchive.
Asahi Shimbun AJW
The Asahi Shimbun AJW (Asia and Japan Watch) is the English-language digital version of The Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper. AJW offers in-depth coverage of Japan, China, Korea and other Asian nations. International scoops, in-depth analyses and features, plus daily news and many Op-ed articles constitute a highly useful news package. AJW also prides itself on its exhaustive coverage of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, massive tsunami and ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. It also offers extensive coverage on cultural trends and fashion as well as the latest in the world of anime and manga. The JDArchive contains thousands of full-text English news articles on the disasters from Asahi Shimbun AJW.
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA)
The Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) at Harvard University was established in 2006 to support research and teaching of all disciplines across the University with emerging geospatial technologies. The Center's goal has been to work with entities across the university to strengthen university-wide geographic information systems (GIS) infrastructure and services; provide a common platform for the integration of spatial data from diverse sources and knowledge from multiple disciplines; enable scholarly research that would use, improve or study geospatial analysis techniques; and improve the ability to teach GIS and spatial analysis at all levels across the university. CGA has developed and powers the map view of items in the JDArchive.
Harvard University Library
Hypercities
Built on the Google Maps and Google Earth APIs, HyperCities Sendai provides active digital media space with Twitters and has accumulated interactive communications on the Eastern Japan Great Earthquake Disaster along with geographical data. Hypercities has contributed hundreds of thousands of tweets related to the disasters to the archive.
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive, is a digital library founded in 1996 with the mission of universal access to human knowledge. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public. The web content that is part of the Digital Archive of Japan's 2011 Disasters is captured and archived using Archive-It, a web archiving service from the Internet Archive. Archive-It allows institutions around the world to harvest and preserve collections of web content and create digital archives. The Internet Archive holds tens of thousands of websites related to the disasters for use in the JDArchive.
Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK)
NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Japan’s only public broadcaster, introduced a radio service in 1925 and a television service in 1953. NHK is financed by the receiving fee paid by each household that owns a television set. This system enables the Corporation to maintain independence from any governmental and private organization, and ensures that the opinions of viewers and listeners are assigned top priority. More details: http://www.nhk.or.jp/pr/koho-e.htm. NHK is presenting a series of TV programs and and a digital archive service which collects testimonials of many eyewitnesses and news clips of Japan's March 11th, 2011, disasters. The JDArchive contains hundreds of news broadcast videos created and hosted by NHK in their digital archive.
Library of Congress
metaLAB (at) Harvard
metaLAB (at) Harvard is a hub for innovation in the arts, media and humanities hosted at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The lab is founded on the belief that some of the key research challenges and opportunities of the new millennium, not to mention crucial questions about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of culture and nature, about democracy and social justice, transcend divisions between the arts, sciences, and humanities; between the academy, industry, and the public sphere; between theoretical and applied knowledge. metaLAB (at) Harvard has been a major partner in the conception and development of the JDArchive since its inception.
National Diet Library (NDL)
The National Diet Library (NDL) was established in 1948 as the only national library in Japan. Under a system of comprehensive submission of works published within Japan, the library's collected materials are preserved for the long-term as a national cultural heritage. The NDL uses its collections to offer its service to the National Diet, the judiciary, administrative agencies, and the Japanese people. The NDL also collects and archives a wide array of websites and other digital materials. In 2002, the NDL began harvesting selected websites with the permission of website owners. Following an amendment to the NDL Law, the NDL began harvesting all government websites in April 2010, including the websites of local governments affected by the disasters in Eastern Japan. The JDArchive contains thousands of websites harvested in the NDL's web archiving efforts related to the disasters.
North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Information Resources (NCC)
Sakura on Project
The Sakura on Project regards the discovery, reorganization, and creation of every "story" as a great value looking toward the future. Within this, using the planting of cherry trees (sakura) as one tool, it produces a program and location for the important, long-term cultivation of the "stories" of both participants' own as well as the areas they encounter. As a digital archive, it records, edits, transmits, and preserves growth and broadening of the "new multiplicity of stories" born from this effort, for a better future. The JDArchive contains a variety of materials from the Sakura on Project, including photographs and videos of their activities with accompanying descriptions.
SaveMLAK
Sendai Mediatheque
In view of the belief that the disaster relief effort can be supported by information dissemination and that records of the disaster can be priceless assets for the future, Sendai Mediatheque (SMT), one of the cutting-edge information centers in Japan, is leading a unique disaster recovery archiving project. In collaboration with citizens, experts, and SMT staff, this archive project focuses on recording the recovery and rebuilding process from the disaster while disseminating thoughts and information through various media, such as images, photos, sounds, and text. Sendai Mediatheque has contributed a number of video and audio segments to the JDArchive.
The Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University
Tohoku University Michinoku Shinrokuden
As the leading national university in the region, Tohoku University in 2011 launched a digital archiving project on the Eastern Japan Great Earthquake Disaster. Collaborating with the government, industry, and academe, the project aims to build a comprehensive archive on disasters in the region, with a broad spectrum of memory, records, case studies. It aims to record the recovery and rebuilding process of the disaster and to disseminate information on a near real-time basis. The Michinoku Shinrokuden project contains a variety of ways to display photographs and other digital information about the disasters, with a special focus on innovative, interactive maps. Tohoku University has contributed tens of thousands of photographs from the Michinoku Shinrokuden project to the JDArchive and plans to contribute about 100,000 photos by the summer of 2013.
Tokyo Foundation
The “101 Voices from Tohoku” Project (Hisaichi no Kikigaki 101) documents the lives and experiences of people affected by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in their own words. This project, employing a unique interviewing style called kikigaki, was launched in July 2011 jointly by the Tokyo Foundation and the Kyouzon no Mori Network, an NPO dedicated to promoting sustainable lifestyles. Over the course of a year, 47 interviewers—members of the two groups, along with students and other project members—visited 101 people living in evacuation centers and temporary homes to conduct one-on-one interviews. These accounts are told entirely in the first person and have been transcribed verbatim (in the local dialect). Focusing on people’s work, family life, and community activities prior to the March 2011 disaster, they also serve as an important archive of information on community life in areas whose historical records were washed away.
Yahoo! Japan
This site is a damaged photo recovery project by Yahoo! JAPAN. Easy to use various ways of search, one can search by keywords, geographical points (e.g., latitude, longitude), time period (pre-disaster, post-disaster), type, prefecture, and community. Yahoo’s recent release on their free-of-charge API platform to access Yahoo Photo Archiving Project on the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami March 11th 2011 may lead to a more collaborated image archive development for open access to society. Yahoo! JAPAN has contributed thousands of photographs of the disaster region to the JDArchive.

Panels, Programs, and Online Presentations

Programs

For a list of upcoming programs on the Daishinsai please check the Website of the Reischauer Institution of Japanese Studies at Harvard University.

Online Presentations

Get Webcasts of Disaster Related Program at Harvard via Vimeo

Listen to the audio Tribute to the Victims of the 2011 Disasters on YouTube

In commemoration of the first anniversary of the disasters in Japan NCC published the first edition of its The NCC Online Guide to Research Access in Japanese Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLAs) (日本研究のためのMLAアクセスガイド) on March 11, 2012.

Readings

Overview of the JDA

Read latest updates on the archive on the News Blog, Twitter, and Facebook:

Article links:

Teaching with the Japan Disaster Archive: A Report in Medias Res
Kyle Parry, Educational Design Coordinator of the JDA, writes about his experience using the archive to teach a course on the March 11 disasters. 11/11/13
Prospects for the Utilization of 3/11 Disaster Archives
Article in the NHK monthly report on broadcast research, discussing JDA and future of 311 digital archives 7/2013
Commentary / Andrew Gordon: Archiving an unprecedented disaster
Asahi Shimbun article 3/11/2012
解説委員室ブログ (NHK)
(In Japanese) NHK News Commentary Bureau's article about the JDA

Click below to download a handout providing an overview of the JDA, 3/21/14:

Readings

Read latest updates on the archive on the News Blog, Twitter, and Facebook:

Article links:

Teaching with the Japan Disaster Archive: A Report in Medias Res
Kyle Parry, Educational Design Coordinator of the JDA, writes about his experience using the archive to teach a course on the March 11 disasters. 11/11/13
Prospects for the Utilization of 3/11 Disaster Archives
Article in the NHK monthly report on broadcast research, discussing JDA and future of 311 digital archives 7/2013
Commentary / Andrew Gordon: Archiving an unprecedented disaster
Asahi Shimbun article 3/11/2012
解説委員室ブログ (NHK)
(In Japanese) NHK News Commentary Bureau's article about the JDA

Useful Links

Digital Archive of Japan's 2011 Disasters
Digital Archive at Harvard
NDL Great East Japan Earthquake Archive
The National Diet Library archive contains various material from public institutions, NPOs, academic institutions, and commercial companies. Also includes records on the Fukushima nuclear reactors.
NHK Archive of 2011 Disasters
NHK (Japan Broad Casting Corporation) has provided access to televised news related to 3/11 and testimonials from eyewitnesses.
写真保存プロジェクト復興支援東日本大震災
East Japan Earthquake Picture Project page on Yahoo Japan where many image are presented by the disaster locations.
Harvard US-Japan Relations Program Vimeo Broadcasts
Post-3/11 Broadcasts of programs and lectures at Harvard University.
Archive of Anti-Nuclear Social Movements in Japan from the National Library of Australia's
The National Library of Australia has archived the websites of new social movements that grew from the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Disasters.
Before and After the Quake and Tsunami
Satellite Photos of Japan, Before and After the Quake and Tsunami from New York Times. Compare left (before the earthquake) and right (after the earthquake).