Joining in

The Kyushu shinkansen route opened the day after the quake (a long way from the quake-affected areas) but this celebratory ad was put on hold for obvious reasons. It's a different example of Japanese people coming together – apparently, 10,000 people lined the route when it was announced the promotion would be filmed, and the ad features a selection.

Bearing witness

On Friday I took a long day drive from Tokyo to the tsunami-hit Tohoku area and back, accompanying two volunteers on their sixth trip. For me, it was as much a case of "bearing witness" as anything. With a lengthy car journey there and several meetings for the volunteers to attend, there was little chance to photograph outside, but the scale of events could be brought home to me, to bear witness  – from knowing to experiencing.

Even two hours from our first destination the roads were being fixed. Small buckles and twists. In some places, many houses had damaged roofs – although, considering the size of the quake, there was remarkably little physical damage – that was left to the tsunami. (Which is not to ignore the physical damage there was – in three, cojoining earthquakes lasting five minutes and shifting parts of Japan metres to the east, there was physical damage.) To drive for two hours through minor fixing, reveals the first indication of scale.

 Mayor Hidekiyo Tachiya

In Soma, where evacuees from neighbouring Minami-Soma (South Soma) and many hard-working Self Defence Forces are housed, we met the mayor, Hidekiyo Tachiya. He gave the volunteers maybe an hour of his time to discuss their thoughts and plans: still energetic and even humorous despite the amount of work going on in and from his town, showing something of the spirit to overcome.

The radio room-cum-Disaster Control Office, Soma

The music duo also accompanying us, Cousin, appeared on the local radio – operated from the Disaster Control Office in the Town Hall – to express support. Local Fukushima TV filmed them while volunteer radio presenter (Sayura Horishita, a singer songwriter herself) interviewed them. In a small room in the corner of the town hall, the engineer in disaster uniform, Sayura reads out the local radiation levels before she introduces the guests. Buttons are occasionally mis-pressed (cutting off a CD track) but everybody only laughs: this is just a small part of keeping people both informed and occasionally entertained.

Volunteer radio presenter, Sayura, interviews Cousin, filmed by local TV and with the engineer in the background

At a local evacuation centre, people are appreciative of a small musical interlude, but the schedule means its almost insultingly short and rushed – perhaps a mistake. But the volunteers can meet with the coordinators, whom they know from before, and make future plans.

We drive across the flat plain of fields that are familiar to many now – if viewed from above. This is the area appearing in an early TV report of the tsunami spreading out across the fields. It's a big plain, with no high ground to quickly escape to. The road we are on was inundated, but is cleared now. Some early fields are clear, but in later ones the SDF are only starting the process of clearing. I'm in the back seat surrounded by boxes and we're on route for a meeting so can't stop to photograph anything. It's misty, and the image of a line of SDF moving through a field, with the discarded cars and debris and houses will remain with me. We pass an open gas station, with tsunami-damaged trailer still next to the forecourt and in the midst of muddy, debris-littered fields: but it is open again for work. Further fields have yet to be approched – destroyed cars, buildings, trees cover the plain.

Then we head for the sea itself. This damage along this plain is huge. Further north of it, other towns are inundated, further south, others yet, but we drive this road along the coast for an hour.

Even a panorama can't reveal the extend of the destruction. Large areas are clutter, others are desolate

 Next to the sea, some houses still "stand" amid rubble

At the coast, in what is/was Arahama, people are at work clearing up, small groups dwarfed in the size of damage. The road itself is clear, but everything to the sides is so much… what can you call it? It's debris, but it was homes, businesses, trees – things. Now its just the remains. Cars range from the hideously mangled to the just overturned. A large school building remains standing, but the surrounding is tangled detrius. Houses tilt where they remain, but foundations are all that are left of many or most. Now we are now only metres from the sea. It's a misty and grey day, but the sea is familiar, no longer the suddenly engorged stranger it had become on March 11. Only the damage it left behind bears witness to its special destructive power. I only photograph for 15 minutes. I don't know where to start. It's terribly awesome, but really it'll be the next day before I can process just what I've seen.

What was once a life has now become "debris"

On the way out toward Sendai from the seafront we pass houses still standing amid destruction – in some, perhaps people are returning, cleaning up. This is after all, the only home they have, they are the "lucky" ones. A car repair shop is open for business. Immediately beyond the tsunami-ravaged area, a convenience store is open for business. A member of staff is cleaning the floor. It looks like a continuous job – today is wet anyway, but people and recovery workers from the area must come in from an outside that has been inundated with water and sand and mud. The shelves are less than half full. We buy snacks and use the toilet. The staff have made those little triangles on the first sheet of toilet paper, like they do in hotels. It's a small touch: a moving indication of a return to normality and respect for those in the area. This is another sign of spirit. The American author Norman Mailer once said that everyday manners are an expression of love. This little show of "manners" is similarly a show of love.

We eat at a local restaurant before heading to another evacuation centre. This one is in the Soka Gakkai (a religious group) building. Half the large centre is unoccupied because of earthquake damaged. They had 1,600 evacuees at first, but as people return and move on now group members who have lost their homes remain. Maybe 30 or 40 people of all ages are there. They are positive and welcoming as Cousin perform again. It's not a false positivity – there are some in tears during the songs – it is a healthy attempt at rebuilding, at support, at care. The children play and the adults play with them: but the child on a parent's shoulder explains simply: "My home was washed away."

"My home was washed away": a child plays at an evacuation centre. The sign on the back wall says, "Tohoku, do your best!"

Portraits: 13

The Far East Side Band, at band leader Jason Hwang's house, New York, 1992
I liked the music of this group, with its "Far East"/jazz/improvised feel – good instrumental music, not easy to pigeon-hole but easy to enjoy. Some music first enters your mind in unknown ways: I can't remember when I first heard them (or even if I suggested or was asked to do the interview for The Wire: memory becomes like a Kazuo Ishiguro novel at times.) But I took their portrait while in New York specifically for The Wire piece and because I liked the music. Individually they continue their music, though this particular line-up lasted for two albums: Jason Hwang (front), Sang-Won Park (left) and Yukio Tsuji (right). It was one of my favourite techniques to corner faces in a photograph's rectangle, and this one does it to the extreme.

Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan, co-owners of Working Title Films, at their office, London, 1993
For some unknown reason, Esquire, for which I did this portrait, thought that these two didn't get on and suggested one idea for the portrait would be to have one in the foreground and the other obscured in some way. I started out doing this in the Polaroid negative I occasionally used to both check lighting and get a photo in its own right (below). They were puzzled at my arranging of them, so I decided to somewhat sheepishly explain – because there seemed to be no tension between them whatsoever. Fortunately they laughed at the misinformation, and I moved on to a more equal portrait. Since they're still working together (the production company behind Bridget Jones Diary, About A Boy, Shaun of the Dead, Burn After Reading, Frost/Nixon etc) clearly they still get on!

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Handmade design

I mentioned this earlier, but now the handwritten newspapers produced in Ishinomaki – an area severely affected by the March 11 quake and tsunami – have made it into Washington DC's news museum (the Newseum). The papers – from The Ishinomaki Hibi Shimbun (Ishinomaki Daily Paper) – look like old-fashioned, hand-drawn layout guides, which you rarely see nowadays, because even a rough guide usually starts on a computer!

Earthquake issue

Wraparound cover for the special issue, with Rob Gilhooly's photo

Finally sent the special edition of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in-house magazine, Number 1 Shimbun, to print. It's usually a monthly magazine-cum-newsletter put together without a budget to speak of, and my design work is usually minimal. But, as we say in the introduction to this special edition: "After years of being on the media back burner, Japan suddenly and terribly became the biggest story in the world on March 11."

The Club needed to make an edition that reflected something of the enormity of the events. There are contributions from writers working for The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Irish Times, The Guardian, Reuters and The Economist, and photographs from freelance photographers who are members or associated with the Club.

The first section concentrates on the quake and tsunami itself, and leads with Telegraph correspondent Julian Ryall's honest and moving piece about the disaster and his reaction to being in the affected zone. It's accompanied by Rob Gilhooly's photos taken as he and Julian worked together. It moved me near to tears to read the meeting with a bereaved 16-year-old. On top of that, the honesty about the journalistic response is devastating, as Julian wrote: "I can't stand it anymore, and — to my shame — I turn away".

Two other sections look at what happened in Tokyo and what the economic/rebuilt future might hold.

At only 24 pages (up from the usual 20) we had enough stories to overflow into next month's regular issue. I hope we've done justice to it all in what is essentially a text-based magazine. The photos, meanwhile, of the devastation are almost "familiar", so we've concentrated on more personal ones, but have made a wraparound cover from one shot of a town after the deluge, and open the magazine with a double-page shot of Self Defence Forces doing recovery work in a destroyed town, also by Rob Gilhooly. Hopefully, the pictures reflect the thought that went into choosing them, thoughts of what the people witnessed, thoughts of conveying the impact without recourse to anything sensational. (After all, we can afford to reflect, coming out more than a month after the events, and being in part a report on reporters, so to speak.)

The online version (designed elsewhere) is available with a PDF of the issue here.

Tower of…?

This has been posted around and about, but it brought a smile to my face, so here it is again.

An artwork by Kuniyoshi Utagawa from 1831 (“Toto Mitsumata no Zu”) features an unusual tower in the background. I've seen this artwork in exhibition and had noticed the tower. It seems to have no immediately understandable function. "Experts" say there was no tower like that and it's probably an expression of the artist's creativity. (On the other hand, it could have been an expression of some architect, sculptor or builder's creativity and actually have been erected there without other purpose, I suppose!)

Currently being built in Tokyo is Japan's tallest building (and a communications tower) the Tokyo Sky Tree, which has an interesting similarity (as tall, free-standing structures might) across the centuries. But good fun. The full painting is around the web.

"Analogue" outside, digital inside

Nice packaging celebrating Japan's forests with NTT docomo's Touch Wood mobile phone which uses Japanese cypress wood.

via watashitotokyo

Portraits: 12

Chris Eubank, boxer, in hometown of Brighton, 1991
I have a better shot somewhere (must be in another box in storage at my friend's house in the UK!) This shot was for City Limits, a commission for which I photographed both Eubank and Watson (also a lost photo) before their fight in 1991. Eubank delivered a blow to Watson in that fight which left Watson brain-damaged, and Eubank contemplating giving up boxing. (Wikipedia says: "After the accident … Eubank and Michael Watson became friends, with Eubank accompanying Watson for the final mile of the 2003 London Marathon, which Watson — still showing physical damage from the fight and taking more than six days — completed to raise money for charity.")

Nuria Espert, actress, director, producer, at the Royal Opera House, London, 1988
Taken during the interview, so never the best way to get a portrait as people are speaking. Nevertheless, I was happy enough with this backstage-with-glass-of-wine feel. I believe she was producing "Rigoletto" at the Opera House. For City Limits.

For more on these portraits, see here, and the Portraits tag at right.

Paper and ink shortage

We in Tokyo are not really inconvenienced that much anymore by the after effects of the big quake. (Just unnerved, like all east Japan, by the continued earthquakes and aftershocks – two bigger than magnitude 6 today, a magnitude 7 yesterday, 28 above magnitude 4 in the past 24 hours. All a month after the big one). But minor inconveniences have knock on effects – no yoghurt is no inconvenience (it takes continuous electrical supply to make), unless you're a yoghurt maker. No cinema in the evening is a minor inconvenience, but a bigger one to those whose business it is. Another serious change affecting business is a number of restaurants closing down in central Tokyo after people just head home while they know trains are running and don't linger for eating out.

Danny Choo – otaku and popular documenter of anime/manga/character design – reports on his blog about the shortage of ink and paper affecting Japan's magazine industry. Just one of the knock-on effects. Also interesting is his online vote-submission for whether his readers prefer paper or pixels – with 60% prefering paper to only 10% pixels (with 30% going either way). So much for any huge swing to the digital for manga.

Can't see the wood for the … fact that it isn't there

Neat table design from design company nendo. Acrylic cast from wood-forms makes a transparent table top with all the textures and shapes of wood – making the above black version look almost like wood at first glance. While the clear version intriguingly looks like wood only at second glance. (Acrylic is also tougher than glass, so in the light of recent events, you may even be able to get under the table in an earthquake)

via fastcodesign

Quick advertising

Tohoku's sake brewers, having suffered the earthquake and tsunami, are not, it seems, about to knuckle under the "self-restraint" (jishuku) that some politicians are recommending here. Tokyo's foot-in-mouth governor, Ishihara, has suggested that now isn't the time to do ohanami (the season's regular cherry blossom viewing). There was a ohanami protest "party" yesterday in front of city hall, and Tohoku's brewers were quick to get a campaign going requesting people to buy their sake – quite rightly, in my view: they have enough on their plate in repairing damage, trauma and everything else without having their business taken away from them as well. It's understandable, of course, that people feel restrained, but a large part of N.E. Japan has their livelihood affected alongside their lives, and you can't rebuild the latter without the former. The banner reads: Flowers/Sake/Japan! and they launched a website and facebook page.

Photographing disaster

Interesting, personal post from a couple of Australian photographers – Trace and Dee – based in Tokyo (whose work name is 37 frames). Not documentary photographers in the sense of all the news media photographers who covered and are covering the Tohoku tsunami, just a couple of photographers who wanted to document and do what they could as volunteers. Very moving, and while documenting the devastation there's also a sometimes different (and welcome) approach to photographing those who've suffered the deluge and its after-effects. Hope they'll excuse using one of their pics to direct you to their site.

Design and destruction

The text I'm laying out mentions seeing the body of the old man who didn't escape as his house fell on him and the tsunami overwhelmed him, his house, his town. And there's the picture from the photographer who was accompanying the journalist. I hadn't really thought of using an image of one of the almost 30,000 dead, and most media outlets haven't, so I check with the editors. (We decide direct relevance means we can, but nothing should identify the man.)

As part of my freelance work, I layout the small monthly in-house magazine for the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan. And what has been a diminishing role for foreign correspondents in Japan, as Japan slipped from journalistic priority, is suddenly a role presenting exactly what you've probably been reading – the FCCJ's members are those who write for The Independent, Irish Times, Guardian and Telegraph in the UK, for TIME in the US, for worldwide press, TV and radio etc. And what is a bread-and-butter design job (always welcome to a freelancer), I suddenly want to make the best issue I can.

And there's the rub. I look through images to choose the "best", the most expressive, the most revealing, the most apposite: how do you design for disaster? The answer, I know, is to let the images speak for themselves, and bring out the best in the writing. Yet this is the first time for me to layout for a trauma so close to home. When I worked at the Telegraph in the UK, I worked in the commercial department. I had a friend who was an editor on the picture desk in the news section, and he spoke, during one conflict, of the distressing nature of studying a stream of unedited images that he looked at day in and day out. For most picture editors and designers, such disasters are "distant", and only the journalists are at the coal face.

This time it seems so near. And it's strange to be trying to select images to make the best looking issue I can – the most expressive, most simple, as a memorial for the victims, and, in this case, also appropriate for the experience of the writers.

So I find myself improving layout and selecting images to design disaster into … what, dignity? But what a choice: is the frozen dead dog outlined in snow too plainly emotive? Has the innundated train left mangled away from the tracks been seen too much? Is the decaying hand coming out from under the house too bleak?

Just over three weeks ago I was holding on to my computer to stop it vibrating off the table while bits and pieces fell off the narrow shelf above on which they were loosely propped. Downstairs another loose glass ornament smashed and a pile of books was falling over. A speaker in the home recording studio across the corridor fell off the keyboard. We live in an electric world and our livelihoods depend on working computers! Good, I thought about 30 seconds into the quake, the house isn't going to fall down. But as the quake continued, I thought that its sheer persistence might achieve what mere strength here in Tokyo was not going to.

But no – it was "the big one" but we were totally undamaged in Tokyo. and subsequently only inconvenienced. First we took in the scale elsewhere in the country and were unnerved by blackouts and potential food shortages, and by further quakes and aftershocks (more than 880 after 3 weeks, all above magnitude 4 – and more than 50 above magnitude 6). Secondly, the individual stories of death and survival from the media and journalist friends made it all the more human. Thirdly, and during the third week after the quake, Tokyo returned cautiously to near "normality", despite the continuing distress of the north east. Here I am in what could be a sort of fourth stage after the tsunami: now it's time to look closely again, and select the best images to express what those elsewhere, though close by, really suffered and now endure. And in a very, very minor way, lay out a small memorial to all the events.

Tokyo Type Directors Club

I went to the show at ggg in Tokyo is of this year's submissions to the TDC Awards yesterday. As might be expected with a submission show, there's the good, the bad and the ugly. Standouts: faces of the football World Cup teams (is that "type"?) from a Korean designer; book package-design which "unzips" (via paper tears) to collapse into scrap on opening; and, in fact, the poster for the exhibition (above), though it doesn't count as a submission.