The emergence of an archive from an encounter with disaster

Abstract

The Hanshin Awaji earthquake disaster of 1995 was a momentous event in Japanese archival science. In addition to rescuing archival materials which might otherwise have been lost in the confusion, people began to concern themselves with preserving a record of the disaster itself. This paper discusses the latter, the preservation of "earthquake disaster records." Following the event, various organizations including volunteer groups, libraries and local government immediately started to compile such records. Their activities raised fundamental issues for archival science: what should constitute such records, and why people collect and preserve them. A category of archival material termed “earthquake disaster records" emerged from society's encounter with disaster and from the interaction of the range of specialists concerned with preservation.