15 Years On: Visitors to Memorial Facilities Keep Declining

Morioka, Iwate Pref., March 10 (Jiji Press)–The number of visitors to facilities built in three northeastern Japan prefectures hit hard by the March 2011 major earthquake and tsunami to pass down the lessons of the disasters has continued to decrease after peaking in 2023. As financial support is being cut or canceled for some of such facilities, the operators face challenges in passing on memories of the disasters to the next generation in a sustainable manner. The total number of visitors to 42 facilities, including memorial museums and disaster ruins, in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures stood at 1,503,844 in 2025, falling for the second consecutive year, according to a survey by the 3.11 Memorial Network, a public interest incorporated association in Ishinomaki, Miyagi. The previous year marked the first decrease excluding during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of the three prefectures, only Miyagi logged an increase in the number of visitors. “There are many generations who don’t know about the disasters, and there are strong concerns about memories disappearing,” a local government official said. As factors behind the decline, some facilities have pointed to a series of bear sightings in the Tohoku northeastern Japan region last autumn and a decrease in school trips. Meanwhile, the 3.11 Memorial Network noted that facilities making efforts to enhance the quality of their exhibitions are gaining more visitors, including repeated ones. At Tsunami Memorial Hall in the city of Kamaishi, Iwate, the number of visitors has been flat in the last few years, standing at around 30,000 annually. Its operator is boosting efforts to attract new visitors by holding online classes at and dispatching “kataribe” storytellers to schools and other establishments far from the facility. The operator is seeking to attract group visitors for school trips and corporate training. But securing human resources remains a challenge as there is only one storyteller at the facility despite visitor demand of hearing stories from those who actually experienced the disasters. The aging of storytellers is a common problem for memorial facilities. “The best scenario is to hire someone who was an elementary or junior high school student (at the time of the disasters), but that’s difficult in reality,” said an official of Tsunami Memorial Hall. Fifteen years after the disasters, reconstruction budgets are expected to be reduced or completed in Iwate and Miyagi, while Fukushima is expected to continue to secure financial resources. As there is a gap in the budget for communication and educational travel related to reconstruction, activities for passing down the memories are at a major turning point. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]