THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
March 14, 2021 at 17:35 JST
Luminous paint displays an emergency evacuation route in darkness in Yamada, Iwate Prefecture. (Wataru Sekita)
YAMADA, Iwate Prefecture--Emergency stairways in this coastal town are now coated in a special luminous paint to help guide residents to safety even after dark if disaster strikes.
The luminous paint can glow for more than 12 hours once it has captured sufficient sunlight or fluorescence.
The paint is the brainchild of Iwate Prefecture residents Yasushi Anazawa and Kenichi Sasaki, who both have bitter memories of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami disaster.
Anazawa, 66, is a former researcher with the Iwate Industrial Research Institute in Morioka and Sasaki, 58, is president of a paint company in Ichinoseki, both in the prefecture.
Anazawa hails from Miyako, a city devastated by the tsunami generated by the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake. Sasaki lost his wife when tsunami engulfed Rikuzentakata, where his home was situated.
The pair worked to develop the special paint through their shared thought of making the best use of their expertise and technology to allow people to safely evacuate in the event of tsunami striking in the future.
A luminous paint maker in Morioka assisted in the project.
The key difference between their invention and existing products on the market is that theirs can glow for longer, be applied to concrete structures and lasts for up to 15 years even if buffeted by wind and ultraviolet light.
(This article was written by Yosuke Fukudome and Wataru Sekita.)
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