Photo/Illutration Yuto Naganuma speaks in one of his study sessions held in December 2018 in Natori, Miyagi Prefecture, to pass down disaster experiences to future generations. (Hideaki Ishibashi)

ISHINOMAKI, Miyagi Prefecture--Yuto Naganuma has long felt uncomfortable with how he is described in the media.

The 26-year-old serves as a storyteller to talk about his community and his former school, Okawa Elementary School, where 84 pupils and staff members were killed or went missing in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami.

But every time he is interviewed, Naganuma says, he is introduced as “a former Okawa Elementary School pupil” or as “a bereaved family member.”

He developed a sense of awkwardness toward this description when he was a senior high school student.

In one interview back then, he thought the media outlet wanted to do a sports-related story. As the captain of the school’s baseball club, he was prepared to discuss the team and the games.

But the reporter kept asking Naganuma about being a former Okawa Elementary School pupil and losing his younger brother, who attended the same school, in the tsunami.

Nothing else was mentioned in the report.

“I think it is easier to describe someone who has achieved something great when they lost a family member,” Naganuma said.

Media organizations have continually sought to interview Naganuma since he spoke in 2016 during a public hearing on whether the Okawa Elementary School building should be preserved.

He has also met many reporters through his storytelling activities to pass down his disaster experiences.

Naganuma thinks that news stories about disaster-stricken areas often feature a “V-shaped recovery.” He felt the same way about 10th anniversary memorial reports on the disaster.

Disaster survivors all seem to be portrayed as having bounced back from a life-shattering experience, even though each of them has a different story, Naganuma said.

After enrolling in college, Naganuma worked as a volunteer in disaster areas because he wanted to return the favor for the support he and his community received. He also wanted to use his firsthand experience to help prepare for the next disaster.

In October 2019, Naganuma traveled to Marumori, a town in Miyagi Prefecture that was hit hard by a typhoon.

While being interviewed by a reporter, he talked about his own experiences. In the report, he was played up as a family member of someone who died at Okawa Elementary School. Again, he said, he made clear he did not want to be portrayed as such.

“It is true that I lost a family member and my neighborhood in the disaster,” Naganuma said. “It can’t be helped that it is mentioned in reports, but I feel uncomfortable being treated as something like a signboard.”

Although he said he understands the media’s duty is to provide comprehensible reports, he wonders if it is appropriate to casually lump disaster survivors together. They may share the same disaster experience, but each of them has a different idea and acts in a different way, he said.

“I want the media to say that we are not all the same,” Naganuma said.

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Yuto Naganuma, left, speaks at a venue in Sendai in December 2019 as part of a series of study sessions. (Hideaki Ishibashi)

He also said he doesn’t want younger generations to feel the loneliness he felt when he tried and failed to convey his intentions.

But it is true that his storytelling activities became widely known thanks to media reports.

Naganuma has hosted a series of study sessions with both disaster survivors and media professionals on how disaster-stricken areas should be covered in news reports. He has also sent questionnaires to collect opinions about the reporting on the 10th anniversary of the disaster.

“Both reporters and storytellers in disaster-affected areas play their roles to convey (our experiences) to society,” Naganuma said. “That’s all the more reason that I want to establish good relations with each other and think about the matter together.”

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