Endlessly spacious, lush and beautiful
After the destruction, what has been raised with resilient hands
Is a landscape no one could have imagined

Photographs taken 11 years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and words from the land spoken over the past 11 years.
New landscapes, intertwining the past and present of disaster-stricken areas.

It is 11 years since the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. During that time, disaster-stricken areas along the Tohoku coastline have seen the building of huge seawalls, the raising of land, the creation of higher ground, and the construction of new towns. Large-scale reconstruction work carried out simultaneously has created seemingly similar-looking townscapes over the different regions. However, if you look at these townscapes individually, there are vestiges of the lives that have been lived in different areas, appearing as imperceptible differences in the landscape.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, artist and poet Natsumi Seo has visited areas affected by the increasing number of natural disasters in recent years, including Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture, painting pictures and engaging in writing with consideration to documenting the words of local people and the landscapes.
In 2022, she decided to turn the stepping-stone style journey she made through disaster-stricken areas into a book. Photographer Takuroh Toyama followed an area from the northern part of Iwate Prefecture to the central part of Ibaraki Prefecture from fall 2022 to spring 2023, connecting points and capturing the landscape of each region as it is now.

The photographic process was split into several periods and spanned 700 kilometers. Sometimes together and sometimes individually, the two artists visited stricken areas and put what they saw and heard there into photographs and words.

Landscapes of the 11th year since the Great East Japan Earthquake as photographed by Takuroh Toyama, and words from disaster-affected places spoken over the past 11 years by Natsumi Seo: “new landscapes” intertwining the past and present of these ravaged areas have been compiled as a photography and poetry collection, “New Habitations: from North to East 11 years after 3.11.” This exhibition features blown-up prints of photographs from different locations, and the poems dotted throughout the book.
We invite you to come see the “new landscapes” that emerge from imperceptible differences in each region, including a slideshow featuring unpublished material.

*Program details are subject to change.