The Road to Recovery

A recent trip to Wajima, Japan, by TACCIA's Shu-Jen Lin shows tragedy in the present but hope for the future.

When TACCIA Managing Director Shu-Jen Lin returned from an extended trip to Wajima, Japan, at the beginning of May, she found herself simultaneously angry and hopeful-angry at the continued state of flux her maki-e artisans find themselves in, but hopeful that the area's recovery will continue.

"I deeply felt that life is not always fair when we started our meeting with our Wajima artists in Kanazawa, and I saw the shadow of desperate emotion on their faces," Lin says.

Six months after the New Year's Day earthquake that devastated the land that is the heartbeat of Japan's urushi and maki-e industry, recovery progress is slow going. The infrastructure damage to the Noto Peninsula, the northwest region that houses the city of Wajima and Ishikawa Prefecture, was greater than anyone anticipated.

The NASA Earth Observatory reports that the 7.5 magnitude earthquake rocked the area for 50 seconds, followed by dozens of strong aftershocks. Infrastructure damage ignited fires that burned through communities. Recovery efforts are complicated by the fact that the surface area along the coast of Noto Peninsula lurched upward as much as four meters (13 feet)—an unusually large uplift due to the fault rupturing so closely to the Earth's surface. Recovery experts on the ground in Wajima told Lin that the uplifted ground did major damage not just to the roadways but also to the underground sewage system, further complicating recovery efforts.