1 Nakamura, Fuyubi. “Memory in the debris: The 3/11 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami”. Anthropology Today, 2012, Vol.28, Issue 3, pp. 20-23. Note: This is not the published version. If you would like to quote this paper, the published version is available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2012.00874.x/abstract Narrative Memory in the debris: the 3/11 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami Fuyubi Nakamura Figs 1 . Utatsu Isatomae in Minamisanriku, in June 2011. When the news reached me that Japan had been rocked by a massive earthquake, causing unbelievably huge tsunami waves swallowing up coastal towns, I was on the other side of the globe in Argentina. Worried about my family and friends in Japan, and staring blankly at the constant flow of disaster images, I felt utterly helpless and restless. The news about Fukushima further rubbed salt into the wound. Later, I was interviewed by the local media in Argentina about the aftermath of the disaster in relation to the role of art, as an exhibition I curated had just opened in Buenos Aires and had given a talk at the Embassy of Japan on the day of the disaster. I was asked what art could do, and whether artworks in the region had survived. At such a distance from the disaster, it was much too early even to contemplate these questions. All I could say at that moment was that, regardless of whether physical beings survived or not, their memories would survive. We could probably find a future in the past. 1 Perhaps with a kind of survivor’s guilt and desire to do something, I went off to Miyagi in Tôhoku, northeastern Japan, soon after I returned to Tokyo in May. As the first anniversary of the disaster approaches at the time of writing, I wish to share some reflections on the aftermath of 3/11 and the relief activities I was involved with in Miyagi from late May until late August