Field Report Update: Salvaging the Damage of Typhoon 19 / Hagibis
Ann Adachi-Tasch
One of our archivist partners, Nobukazu Suzuki, who has collaborated with us in the past including helping with Ko Nakajima’s Collection Survey, and giving a presentation about his work in Cambodia, Japan, and Malawi at the 2017 Association of Moving Image Archivists conference, has been working to salvage collections in Japan damaged by the Typhoon 19 / Hagibis that landed on October 12th, 2019. Below is a short update on this process.
The Typhoon 19 / Hagibis that landed on Japan on October 12, 2019, brought serious damage to museums and libraries in the Kanto and Tohoku districts (northeast regions) of Japan. As announced by the Kawasaki city on October 18th, Kawasaki City Museum (KCM) was also one of the affected cultural institution.
KCM is a facility complex with a museum that collects materials related to the local history of Kawasaki city on the one hand, and on the other, functions as an art museum with collections of notable photographs, manga comics, films, and video.
According to the report published by the Kawasaki city on December 5th, all nine underground storages had water damage, resulting to the harm of all 260,000 items (except for the 31,000 items that were not stored in the basement). The most recent report from the city on April 13th, 2020 states the damages were afflicted to the below materials.
Films: Approx. 12,600 items
Video: Approx. 1,700 items
Photographs: Approx. 8,600 items
Manga comics: Approx. 63,100 items
The schedule moving forward entails taking emergency measures until March of 2021, and moving into 2022 and beyond, continuing the restoration and freeze preservation. However, the date of finalizing this rescue process is unknown.
Reference (in Japanese) : 川崎市「川崎市市民ミュージアム 収蔵品レスキューの状況について(2020年4月13日)」
http://www.city.kawasaki.jp/250/cmsfiles/contents/0000116/116670/siryou1.pdf