Art Student Launches Community Paper Featuring Voices of Noto Quake Victims; Local Publication Provides Inside Look at Noto Victims

By Kotaro Hirose / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

2:00 JST, January 6, 2025

NOTO, Ishikawa — A university student who was visiting her family home in Noto, Ishikawa Prefecture, when a massive earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula a year ago has launched a community paper that runs articles featuring the feelings and thoughts of the victims of the quake.

“I want to record feelings that cannot be expressed in spoken words,” said Ayumi Sakaguchi, 22, a fourth-year student at Kanazawa College of Art in Kanazawa who launched “Medium (For Noto)” at her own expense on Dec. 12. Sakaguchi wrote in the paper about four people, including her parents, who decided to demolish their damaged house. She also wrote about her own emotional ups and downs immediately after the earthquake.

She plans to publish the paper once a year.

Sakaguchi, who is studying a major in visual design, did everything for the paper, from the reporting and illustrations to laying out the pages.

Medium (For Noto) is the same size as a standard newspaper, and the title comes from the Latin origin of the word media.

The theme of the first issue is “Home.” One thousand copies of the 20-page paper are on sale in bookstores in the Okunoto region. They are also being distributed for free at community centers and temporary housing.

The paper highlights the struggles and honest feelings of those who had to make the painful decision to leave their homes behind.

The Shiromaru district of Noto, where Sakaguchi’s family home is located, was hit by tsunami up to five meters high. The 60-year-old home was flooded and later certified as partially destroyed.

To rebuild their lives, Sakaguchi’s parents decided to apply for a local government system that provides publicly funded demolitions and removals.

Sakaguchi’s parents talked about the mixed feelings they had at the time. They said that if they were younger, they might have moved to Kanazawa. They also said it is meaningless to complain.

A man from the town of Matsunagi, Suzu City, which was temporarily cut off by the earthquake, told Sakaguchi that he decided to rebuild his half-destroyed house because he “did not want to abandon the town.”

He gave up the rebuilding project once when the area was hit by heavy rain in September last year but was quoted as saying, “I’m [rebuilding my home] like it’s my mission, like it’s something I have to do.”

Line graph of feelings

After spending about a week in an evacuation center with her family, Sakaguchi made a line graph to show her emotional ups and downs, because being able to objectively see her feelings calmed her down. She ran the graph in “Medium” on a 4-page spread with accompanying illustrations and text.

In the graph, the line fluctuates wildly on Jan. 3 last year, when Sakamoto walked through the devastated town for the first time after the earthquake. It then drops sharply around Jan. 23, when she returned to her own home in Kanazawa.

“Whenever I let my mind wonder, I remember what happened after the quake and become sad because of my own powerlessness,” she wrote.

She took photos of a palm tree that survived the tsunami at the back of her parents’ house and of the heavily devastated coastline.

“Even though it was reduced to rubble, this is the town where I grew up,” she wrote.

She concluded the first issue of the paper with these words: “Even if the scenery has changed, if I keep on coming back and making memories, I may one day come to think of this place as home.”

Sakaguchi said she will continue observing Noto’s recovery and publishing the paper. “Stories written by newspaper reporters who came to the disaster-stricken area gave me emotional support during my time at the evacuation center. From ‘inside’ Noto, I will also continue conveying the voices of the locals,” she said.