After the quake

On 3 March 2011, an earthquake hit Miyagi on the east coast of Japan. It was devastating, yet it was only the beginning. In its wake came a great tsunami that overwrought much of Japan’s eastern coast. It deluged entire towns and displaced thousands of people. Nearly 4,000 people were known to have died and it left behind a trail of horrors.

The nuclear powerplant at nearby Fukushima had its defences breached, leaving a disaster of antediluvian proportion, which devastated entire parts of Sendai and the region of Tohoku to the north. It became known as Japan’s 3/11.

Fukuoka was about as far away from the epicentre of the earthquake as you can be while still remaining on Japanese soil; almost exactly diagonally opposite to Tohoku. Yet just as the whole world looked on in sorrow as workers doused the nuclear reactors at Fukushima with buckets of water with almost certain knowledge of their own radiation-induced sickness, so did Fukuoka.

Fukuoka sits atop the active Kega fault and, though not nearly as devastating as the shock at Miyagi, life there was brought to a standstill by its biggest earthquake in 200 years in 2005.

And so Fukuoka’s inhabitants were active in the relief effort for the Miyagi quake victims. They gave their money and time to the American Red Cross, Salvation Army and Japanese Red Cross, among others, as well as giving blood at hundreds of centres across the area to help the sick. The mayor of Fukuoka, Soichiro Takashima, saw the potential in all of this goodwill and began to implement an idea.

Three months after the Miyagi quake, Takashima convened a caucus. Attending was Muhammad Yunus, who led a panel discussion involving founder and CEO of Japanese clothing super-brand UNIQLO Tadashi Yanai, directors of corporate conglomerates Danone and Veolia in Japan, as well as the president of Kyushu University.

During three days of deliberations, those present prepared a number of plans to work with the Fukuoka community to create a hub of social enterprise.

The Mayoralty would devise a building, a hub for these and future enterprises, a ‘Grameen House’ at Kyushu University campus.