JAPAN

CHILDREN’S RIGHT TO AND SUPPORT FOR PLAY IN POST DISASTER JAPANESE CONTEXT

BY HELEN WOOLLEY AND ISAMI KINOSHITA

Japan experiences 20 per cent of the world’s earthquakes and on 11 March 2011 suffered a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and massive tsunami causing widespread death and destruction along the eastern coastal areas, and triggering the failure of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The nuclear meltdown was the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl. The first tsunami wave reached the coast 15 minutes after the earthquake. The waves were larger than had been expected or planned for, reaching 38 metres, the height of a 12-storey building, in some locations. A continuous stretch of land more than 500 km in length and sometimes 4 km wide was directly affected and the volume of water made an unexpected impact as it travelled up the narrow river valleys. This was a unique triple disaster of massive earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant failure never experienced before anywhere in the world. The widespread damage has been referred to as the worst natural disaster in Japan’s recorded history, but affected a low-density population in this coastal and rural area. However, entire towns were washed away by the tsunami, reducing some communities to less than half of their pre-tsunami populations (WPRO/WHO, 2012). There was a high death toll of 19,533 people, many missing people, and displacement of families resulting in trauma, shock, grief and isolation. There was a massive loss of property resulting in 26.7 million tons of debris with a very high rebuilding cost.

Risks to children Children experienced a ‘cascading series of life stressors’ (Weissbecker et al., 2008 p. 32) including loss of family, relatives, friends, homes, neighbourhoods and play opportunities; loss of school days and destruction and damage of schools. There is now also evidence of long term health implications. Before the disaster, there were only one to two cases of thyroid cancers in a million Japanese children but now Fukushima has more than 100 confirmed or suspected cases, having tested about 300,000 children1. In addition there is an increased suicide risk among young children, particularly girls, who experienced the trauma of earthquake at preschool age2; higher PTSD risk in regions with radiation-related impacts than in regions where the main damage was caused by the earthquake and tsunami3, behaviour problems and other mental health issues4. Many children who were evacuated to other areas across Japan had to move several times and some were separated from their families. Such children had difficulty making friends and often suffered at the hands of bullies who accused them of spreading nuclear radiation in the school.

Right to play

Following visits to the post-disaster area in 2012 and 2014 we suggested a framework of Space, People, Intervention and Time that supported children’s right to play5. Examples were provided of where this had happened and also where these dimensions were limiting or restricting children’s right to play (Woolley and Kinoshita, 2015).

The research reported here builds on that previous work and was undertaken six years after the disaster as part of the IPA’s Children’s Access to Play in Crisis situations. The current research was undertaken in Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture which was severely affected by the triple disaster and where 3,541 people died and 427 people are still missing. It explored the memory of experiences of a small number of children at different stages after the disaster: in emergency shelter/accommodation, in temporary housing and in new housing.

Evacuation stage: until six months after the disaster

Immediately after the disaster people were evacuated to shelters and emergency evacuation locations such as school gymnastic halls or school shelters and these were very crowded spaces. The atmosphere was very sad and children played quietly indoors. Some shelters were visited by volunteers to support children’s play so some of children were then able to have a different experience supported by the volunteers.

For the children whose houses were safe after the tsunami, the sad atmosphere restricted their free play outdoors. In these areas the landscape after the disaster was enough to limit children’s play because of the mass of debris resulting from the disaster. However, one child reported that they would hit the debris with a stick as a way to deal with their stress and said it was ‘allowing their stress to explode’.

Temporary Housing stage: six months after the disaster until moving to current housing

Once moved from the evacuation centre children moved to one of three types of living accommodation.

Some children moved to live at a relative’s house and these children had no friends around the new location so they tended to play at home. Others moved to public temporary housing and in these locations there were no places for play around the temporary houses. Finally, some children returned to their original home directly from the evacuation shelter if their houses were safe or only slightly damaged. These children stated that part of the park where they used to play was occupied by temporary housing and they could not play there anymore.

Children who were told that they were not to play outdoors stayed indoors and played video games. However, some tried to seek out secret places such as under the bridge where they enjoyed catching fish in the river and cherished the riverside as a place to have contact with nature. The 6th grade children liked to explore different places where they could play, even though this act of seeking out new places was secret from their parents. The process of finding new play spaces with friends became an adventure.

New housing: public house apartment or new house, from temporary housing stage until present

In the 6 years since the disaster, in order to play children have been mainly staying at home and using other indoor commercial facilities such as a shopping centres, game centres, Karaoke, and other places, partly because these were soon rebuilt. This kind of behaviour might also have happened before the disaster, but then the children had other choices of where they could spend time such as in parks and hanging out on the streets.

Space

Most of the children reported that they lost spaces where they previously played before the disaster, and stayed indoors playing video games every day. There were three reasons limiting the space for play meaning that they had no other way but to be indoors to play those games. First the disaster itself destroyed spaces where the children used to play; second, parks and schoolyards which were not destroyed became dominated by construction work for building temporary houses; third, the surroundings of the temporary houses were covered in tarmac and occupied in many locations by extensive tarmac areas for parked cars.

There were also social reasons restricting children’s use of spaces. First, many children had a loss of friends because they were in temporary and other housing provision in different locations. Second, in the early stages at the evacuation centre, the atmosphere of sadness and shock being experienced by the adults was very great. Third, in the areas affected by the nuclear disaster children could not play outdoors, even after decontamination was completed. In these areas children were told by parents not to play outdoors, not to touch leaves, etc.

Time

The current culture in Japan for children is very much focussed on education and this has reduced children’s time for play because of school and after school programmes. In the post disaster situation time was increasingly a constraint on play for some children because of the need to travel, sometimes long distances, on buses to and from temporary accommodation (Woolley and Kinoshita, 2014). However, for some time was not the problem, the greater difficulty was finding friends to play with around their temporary, new or existing living area.

Other reasons limiting play

Most of the children said that, the stressful atmosphere meant that adults told them not to play or they spontaneously refrained from playing outdoors in the prevalent atmosphere of loss and despair. In the evacuation centres children had to be patient with the inconvenient and difficult situation of having no privacy and living together with a lot of people in a high density space. If children were playing around the temporary houses, children were told not to play by adults. This was because the residents wanted to live quietly, because the structure of the temporary houses did not have good soundproofing and the residents were stressed by noise. Some children stayed at home for psychological issues. The 10-12 year old girls who saw many dead bodies at the time of the tsunami experienced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and it took a long time for them to overcome the experience. One girl admitted that she did not go out to play because she had withdrawn into herself. The social worker who has been supporting them through play work, reported that the children could only talk about their experiences recently: that is 6 years after the disaster.

Supporting children’s right to play

A range of Interventions and People (Woolley and Lowe, 2015) supported opportunities for children’s play including mobile play cars full of building blocks, crayons and other play props, the development of a children’s centre, adventure playgrounds and a series of ongoing activities in the years since the triple disaster.

Mobile play support

The NPO ‘Rainbow Color Crayon’ provided mobile play opportunities using a play car in evacuation centres and then at the temporary housing sites. This NPO visited one or two of the 134 temporary sites a day, although there were too many sites in Ishinoamki city for them to cover them all. The children anticipated the weekly visits and appreciated them very much and had good memories of those play activities. The founder of Rainbow Color Crayon explained that, at first, the adults did not understand the importance of play for children. However, when the adults saw that the ‘children recovered their smile through play activities’ facilitated by different organizations, they could understand the importance of play for children and some of the adults even started supporting the play activities. Children’s ‘Rights’ Centre

In Ishinomaki city Save the Children Japan worked to build a Children’s Center called ‘Rights’ using a participatory process with the children and using a financial donation from a big whisky company. The children who were interviewed said that they wanted to have other places like the ‘Rights’ centre where children can gather for free. Before this centre existed some of the children were isolated or withdrawn. The centre enabled children to make friends for the first time after the disaster and the children not only appreciated the physical building but also the role of the staff. The staff took a reflective approach to their practice, observing the children and reporting that initially they moved harshly, without clear objectives, rather than playing something specific. Over time this changed. The staff observed the children in detail and cuddled close with them as long as possible. This reflexive practice enabled the staff to understand the mental condition of the children post disaster and adjust their ways of engaging with these children.

Adventure playgrounds

Adventure Playgrounds also made an important contribution to supporting children’s play. There are eight adventure playgrounds in Ishinomaki City and most of these were functioning after the disaster, although at a much reduced frequency of once a month (Kinoshita & Woolley 2015). The Japanese Adventure Playground Association supported local volunteer groups to set up temporary pop-up playgrounds. They also built other adventure playgrounds and trained playworkers to support these playgrounds in disaster affected areas. One such example is the Adventure playground Asobi-ba in Kesenuma City where a big slide had been made with tsunami play in mind. Children self-initiated and organised tsunami play by flushing water from the top of the slide. However, whenever any child found the game scary and distressing, the playworkers stopped the game. But one playworker recollected the following play experiences of children:

“Tsunami play was seen often at Asobi-ba. With a handmade slide, a child gliding from the top plays the part of the tsunami. A child standing below is drenched, and may die or not, and at the side another child is positioned for announcing a major tsunami warning. They all survived on this occasion.”

Ongoing activities

In the years since the disaster NPOs for children now organise a network to encourage, support and enable Ishinomaki to become a Child Friendly City. Through collaboration in organising activities with each other, the NPOs have raised the consciousness of the city to grow the network for children to make the local government become a more child friendly city. Three new play provisions and activities were promoted. First, the rebuilding the Kamegamori-adventure playground near the temporary housing at the Nogawa River which houses a lot of displaced people in crowded quarters. Second, a two-day festival called Mini City Ishinomaki was organized. The event became bigger and bigger as people heard about it and eventually more than two thousand children participated during the two day period. The third approach was Hack’s House where a garden of a house was changed and improved to allow for abundant play.

Importance of play in humanitarian and Disaster Risk Reduction work

The people supporting children’s opportunities for play included large international organisations, smaller NPOs, commercial organisations, individuals and as time has gone by city authorities. International organisations included Save the Children and UNICEF; national organisations included Japan Adventure Playground Association, Children’s Theatres, the Good Toy Committee and the National Toy Library Association. NPOs included Rainbow Color Crayon and individuals included play workers who travelled, or moved from one part of the country to another to support this work. Because play organizations became involved at the first stage of the disaster response and rebuilding planning, international organizations and donors were open to integrate the right to play in aspects of the development program although they were not able to reach all children affected by the disaster.

To some extent this reflects the suggestions of the Sendai Framework7 that different levels and types of organisations should be involved in Disaster Risk Reduction. The full extent of how this support is provided needs further research. However, we do know that the children themselves stated three things needed in such a post disaster situation. First, the children said adults should understand the importance of play, especially after a disaster when children are particularly stressed. Second, it is important that there be a gathering place where children can meet others, make friends and play safely. Third, the children said it is important that mobile play opportunities at temporary housing sites are provided.

References

1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-11/fukushima-radiation-levels-high-four-years-after-disaster/6297718 2. Fujiwara T, Yagi J, Homma H, Mashiko H, Nagao K, Okuyama M; Great East Japan Earthquake Follow-up for Children Study Team. (2017). Suicide risk among young children after the Great East Japan Earthquake: A follow-up study. Psychiatry Res. 2017 Jul;253:318-324. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2017.04.018. Epub 2017 Apr 9. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28412615 3. Matsumoto K, Sakuma A, Ueda I, Nagao A, Takahashi Y. (2016). Psychological trauma after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2016 Aug;70(8):318-31. doi: 10.1111/pcn.12403. Epub 2016 Jun 28. 4. Weissbecker I, Sephton SE, Meagan BM, Simpson DM. 2008. Psychological and physiological correlates of stress in children exposed to disaster: current research and recommendations for intervention. Children, Youth and Environments 18: 31–70. Available at http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye 5. Woolley, H. and Kinoshita, I. (2015) Space, People, Interventions and Time (SPIT): A Model for Understanding Children’s Outdoor Play in Post-Disaster Contexts Based on a Case Study from the Triple Disaster Area of Tohoku in North-East Japan. Children and Society, 29: 434-450 DOI:10.1111/chso.12072 6. Kinoshita, I. and Woolley, H. (2015) Children’s Play Environment after a Disaster: The Great East Japan Earthquake, Children 2: 36-62. doi:10.3390/ children2010039 7. United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015) Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 http://www.unisdr.org/we/ coordinate/sendai-framework [Accessed 25.7.17}