For the Creative Reconstruction: Vision Formulation 1, 5th Session, Noi Sawaragi, the art critic, was invited to give a talk titled, “The Art of the Japanese Archipelago and Its Foundation”.
When thinking about art in terms of the “Japanese archipelago”, unlike Western Europe from where “art”, as we know it, had generated, Japan has been, from the olden days, victim of many natural disasters including earthquakes, and therefore has always lived with unstable grounds. It was very interesting to hear that pictures depicting past major earthquakes are important in the study of Japanese art. It led us to the thinking that not only is it necessary to consider the Great East Japan Earthquake, but also to study how the Japanese people had coped with past earthquakes. (Akagi)