Disaster Storytelling and Volcanic Eruptions Caused by Debris Avalanches on Mt. Bandai in Aizu and Mt. Unzendake and Mt. Mayuyama in Shimabara

• Published in: Journal of disaster research Vol. 16; no. 2; pp. 141 - 145
• Main Authors: Sato, Hiroshi, Ono, Yuichi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01-02-2021
• ISSN: 1881-2473; 1883-8030
• DOI: 10.20965/jdr.2021.p0141

People tend to forget the past. For example, nine years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011, and memories of the disaster have begun to fade even in the disaster-stricken areas. People who have experienced disasters directly have tried to spread the memories of those events in various ways because they do not want their children and grandchildren to endure what they did. One of the most impressive ways of sharing these memories is for witnesses of disasters to communicate how they directly experienced them. There is a challenge in handing down these stories because people directly affected by the disasters will die within the next ten years. This paper takes up two examples of volcanoes in Japan, and examines how stories of these disasters were passed on to people who have not experienced them directly. We proceed by investigating common points in these stories and comparing them, and also by exploring the activity of passing how these disaster stories have been passed down after more than 100 years since its occurrence when there are no more survivors who have any direct memory of it.