Fukushima Colours - The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Book Launch Series 2012

The catastrophe on 11 March 2011 has had a deep impact on the Japanese society, and on our global world. Almost twenty thousand people were left dead or missing after the disaster, and the tsunami destroyed entire communities. It will take years for the full extent of the nuclear crisis’ impact on Japan to become clear. Yet, a year after the tsunami, it is possible to see some of the consequences that the disaster has had on agriculture, the fishing industry, people’s health and research about renewable energy sources. In her reportage book Fukushima Colours, multilingual author Elin Lindqvist has documented the aftermath of the crisis, in collaboration with Japanese journalist Yuko Ota, and Japanese photographer Yoshikazu Fukuda. She has closely followed eight individuals or groups of individuals representing different parts of Japanese society all through 2011, in order to see how people affected by the crisis have recovered. Through these individual stories, we hear the emergence of a common voice striving towards a more sustainable and ecological future in Japan. * The book will be available on the day at the discounted price of £18. Elin Lindqvist was born in Tokyo in 1982 and currently lives in England. She has studied at New York University in New York and Sophia University in Tokyo. She is an international writer, and has published three novels in Swedish (Tokyo natt, 2002; Tre röda näckrosor, 2005 and Facklan, 2009). She also works as a freelance journalist, dramaturge and translator. In the spring of 2011, she reported about the catastrophe in Japan for Sweden’s largest newspaper Aftonbladet, and she wrote about the aftermath of the crisis for leading daily newspapers Svenska Dagbladet in Sweden and Aftenposten in Norway. Dr Akira Matsuda studies the relationship between archaeology - and more broadly cultural heritage - and the general public from anthropological and sociological points of view. He is currently doing research into the representation of damage caused by natural disasters in Japan over the last 500 years. Matsuda completed his PhD in public archaeology at University College London in 2009. He worked as a project-based consultant in UNESCO's Division of Cultural Heritage in 2004 and 2005, and was a Handa Japanese Archaeology Fellow at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures from January 2009 to August 2011. Since 2010, he has been teaching at the School of World Art Studies and Museology, UEA, and most recently co-edited a book, New Perspectives in Global Public Archaeology (Springer, 2011) with Okamura Katsuyuki. He is the Membership Secretary of the World Archaeological Congress, and is now working on the publication of a book on cultural heritage in East Asia. This event is free but booking is essential. Places can be booked at: http://www.dajf.org.uk/events/booking-form Talk at 6pm, followed by a drinks reception to 8pm Admission free