Photo/Illutration Members of the Rekishi Shiryo Network retrieve historical materials from a flooded warehouse in Sano, Tochigi Prefecture, on Nov. 16, 2019. (Provided by Keiko Takayama, associate professor at Utsunomiya University)

Old documents, diaries, paintings, photographs, maps, folkcraft items and even farm tools, all of which can be found fairly easily around Japan, are important materials that can shed light on the history and development of local communities and how their dialects evolved over time.

These items need to be preserved for posterity. But they can easily vanish due to regional depopulation and urban redevelopment or when a natural disaster strikes.

For national treasures and cultural properties designated as such by local governments, there is hope for their recovery and reconstruction with government funding. But items owned by private citizens or organizations are usually forgotten.

On the understanding that such privately owned materials have historical value and are worth protecting, communities affected by the Great Hanshin Earthquake 25 years ago attempted to salvage all sorts of materials from ruined homes and buildings. The items were stored in public archives and elsewhere until they could eventually be returned to their owners.

Preserving familiar historical materials was deemed crucial to relaying disaster experiences and lessons learned from them to future generations.

One month after the 1995 disaster, these attempts resulted in the establishment of Rekishi Shiryo Network (Historical materials network) in Hyogo Prefecture by history researchers and other concerned citizens alarmed by the loss of materials from damaged homes that were being torn down.

With its secretariat set up in the literature department of Kobe University, the network has since expanded its activities around Japan. It accomplished this by encouraging its members to visit regions hit by major disasters.

Over the years, new groups sprang up. The network now consists of more than 20 such groups of volunteer researchers, museum curators, students and citizens.

In recent years, the network has been kept busy by successive outbreaks of torrential rain and typhoons.

In the torrential downpours and flooding that struck western Japan in July 2018, documents dating from the Edo Period (1603-1867) from the former village of Tachima, which were stored at a civic hall in Uwajima, Ehime Prefecture, became water-logged.

The network cleaned and dried the documents and moved them from a fisheries cooperative warehouse to a refrigerated facility at Ehime University, where restoration work continues.

The network also supported projects to save old documents kept at private homes in areas affected by Typhoon No. 19 last October.

In Nagano Prefecture, widespread flooding occurred after the Chikumagawa river's embankment collapsed, prompting local university and museum staffers to establish a network called Shinshu Shiryo Net.

To protect historical materials, it is crucial they are kept somewhere secure. Flooding triggered by the typhoon inundated the basement storeroom of a local government cultural facility. This served to underscore the obvious need to check the sturdiness and safety of storage facilities where historical records are kept.

Another important issue concerns the appropriation of government funding to support preservation work and the establishment of a government organization for such endeavors.

Japan has no dedicated teams to rescue cultural assets in times of crisis, nor a restoration center. In Italy, regional bureaus of document protection swing into action when natural disasters strike. It would be in Japan's interest to learn from Italy.

"Every community needs to keep discussing what records are of value and how they should be preserved for posterity," said Hiroshi Okumura, a professor who heads Kobe University's Graduate School of Humanities and Faculty of Letters. Okumura has been active in the field since the Great Hanshin Earthquake.

To know about one's community from historical materials is the starting point of disaster preparedness.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Jan. 22