Remembering 11th March 2011

Today I visited the annual Japan Matsuri festival in London. This year it was held around County Hall across the river from the Houses of Parliament. 

Inevitably the focus was on the events that followed the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck north east Japan on 11th March this year. I was encouraged to make a white gauze "sakura" (cherry blossom) brooch by the people representing the Sakura Front, one of a number of charities collecting funds for the relief of survivors. 

Inside County Hall, the Japan Tsunami Exhibition, was profoundly moving. In addition to photographs a table displayed a number of objects recovered from the area. These were displayed on pieces of brown cardboard and everyone of them told an enormous amount about the people to whom they had once belonged. These were not televisions or computers but small pieces of mass produced china and children's toys, including  a simple doll carved very crudely from a piece of wood. How poor do you have to be to provide your child with such a toy? While I am truly humbled by the subliminal wealth of the parental love that must have created that toy, I am moved enormously by this simple object that says so much about the profound simplicity, hardship and poverty of these victims. People who had so little before the wave struck, have lost so much in material and human terms. 

The stoicism of the Japanese following the catastrophe is legend. Their battles continue. Alongside the exhibition was a series of photographs of survivors from the affected area all saying "I still dare to hope for - the rebuilding of my home, my village, no more tsunami's . . ." 

It is a date I would not want to forget, Sakura brooch or not - and shame on me if I should: I was born on the 11th March.