Did you know there is garbage buried under our feet?
Come meet the garbage obake (supernatural creatures) of Koto-ku!

This area of land was created by the reclaiming of garbage from the Tokyo metropolitan area from the Edo period onwards.
Since then, rubble resulting from disasters such as the Great Fire, the Great Kanto Earthquake, and the Bombing of Tokyo firebombing raid has sometimes been used for construction.
The “tsukumogami”in the Hyakki Yako parade of Japanese folklore are old household objects that have acquired a kami or spirit over many years.
Japanese people were traditionally afraid that discarded household objects held a grudge against them.
Today, one of the takeaways from these traditions is a sense of “mottainai” (waste not want not).

This is an exhibition taking a fresh look at our relationship with garbage as it explores layers of history.

Following the Great East Japan Earthquake, NOOK, which has documented the recovery process in the disaster-stricken areas, set up an office in a housing complex in Nishi-ojima, Koto-ku last year.
Since being there, NOOK organizers have become aware of the layers of local history. This neighborhood, nowadays a peaceful place where different people come and go, has endured repeated disasters on a massive scale. After the war, it also experienced intense urban development and pollution during Japan’s period of rapid economic growth.
For example, elderly people in the neighborhood will suddenly start recounting memories of the air raids; and former “golden” boys and girls with roots in Tohoku and elsewhere think back to the polluted air of Showa-era Tokyo with a sort of nostalgia.
In the Tokyo Bay reaches of Koto-ku you will find Yumenoshima, a site which was once the last stop for the disposal of city garbage and is now an artificial island of reclaimed land. Around 60 years ago, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru, a Japanese tuna fishing boat which was contaminated by nuclear fallout from American thermonuclear weapons testing in the Pacific, was left to rot as garbage here, but thanks to the efforts of local residents, it has been preserved in its original state, and even today continues to spark memories of the calamity as well as pose a variety of questions.

You could say that from the start, Koto-ku was land created by the reclaiming of garbage from the Tokyo metropolitan area from the Edo period onwards. Rubble resulting from disasters such as the Great Fire, the Great Kanto Earthquake, and the Bombing of Tokyo firebombing raid has sometimes been used for construction.
Additionally, during the“Garbage War” that took place in Tokyo in the 1960s through the 1970s, protests by Koto-ku, which up until then had been responsible for waste disposal in central Tokyo, brought about the spread of dispute and protest throughout Tokyo, and ushered in a growing awareness amongst citizens of recycling.
In this way, we might say Koto-ku’s history of repeated disasters and recovery from them is inextricably linked to garbage.

We are facing difficult times, including frequent natural disasters, climate change-driven environmental upheaval, and widening disparities in the center-periphery relationship. This exhibition also introduces ongoing efforts to turn rubble into energy in the areas affected by the Noto Peninsula Earthquake, as well as personal accounts from areas that have experienced land reclamation as a part of recovery after the Great East Japan Earthquake.
While taking a fresh look back at the path Koto-ku has taken, this exhibition brings together things currently happening in different regions, in the hope of pinpointing the questions we must face going forward, and the pointers to help us confront them.

*Program contents are subject to change.