Articles
The “Hours of Life” and the Making of a Patchwork Quilt after a Nuclear Accident Evacuation: Connecting the Past and Present of One’s Life Experiences
2022 Volume 28 Pages 89-105
Details
2022 Volume 28 Pages 89-105
The post-disaster recovery process can be supported by the inhabitants of affected communities reverting to old habits. However, in the case of a nuclear accident, where inhabitants are forced to evacuate their homes, old habits cannot always be maintained in the new circumstances. The evacuees thus attempt to form new habits in order to adapt themselves to a new way of living under new circumstances, but at the same time face a dilemma because of their attachment to their previous way of life.
The case study presented in this paper is based on an interview with a female evacuee who relocated from Fukushima to western Japan in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. The paper attempts to demonstrate the therapeutic process of “hours of life” carried out by the woman as she started engaging in a handicraft in her new post-disaster context. The “hours of life” here is the process and timescale necessary for an individual to recover from a disaster. The interviewee addresses the process by which she began the self-expressive activity of creating a fabric picture, a kind of patchwork quilt, by using her old clothes worn before she evacuated. This new habit, initially a reflective and nostalgic time that helped her remember her old days before the evacuation, has gradually allowed her to come to terms with the nuclear catastrophe. The “hours of life” is a time in which she can face herself through the creative act and allow her mind interplay between the present and the past iteratively. Therefore, her practice of quilting plays a recovering role in linking the present and the past, which was once destroyed by the nuclear accident.
This case study contributes to our understanding of a survivor’s new daily habit as, not only an art therapy intended to aid recovery, but also how it has a creative effect in maintaining the “hours of life” essential for disaster survivors.
