Explorations of 3/11 Through Artwork: Yasusuke Ôta’s ‘Deserted Town’

Natural disasters have been a recurring element of Japanese life for centuries. Located on a highly active tectonic zone, earthquakes and tsunamis pose a constant risk to the people of Japan and have repeatedly devasted towns and cities throughout its history. But as much as the threat of such disasters are well recognised in Japan, it does not make it any less devasting when they do occur.

At 2.46 PM on the 11^th of March 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit the Tohoku region of Japan, the strongest earthquake in recorded history. This earthquake was shortly followed by a devastating tsunami that struck the North-eastern coast of Japan, wiping out entire towns and killing more than 19,000 people. Adding yet further devastation, these dual disasters would then result in a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, displacing a further 150,000 people as the surrounding area was forcibly evacuated.

What was left behind in Fukushima however was unknown numbers of domestic pets and farm animals. And it is these animals that have become the subject of one post-3/11 Japanese photographer seeking to explore the aftermath of the disaster through his photography.

Ôta, Yasusuke. Deserted Town. 2011, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In the photo Deserted Town from Yasusuke Ôta’s collection The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima, we are met with the surreal image of an ostrich strolling through the deserted streets of a Fukushima shopping district. In any other context, such an image could be considered highly comical. And indeed, it could certainly be argued as a moment of levity in a photo collection largely comprising of disturbing images of dead animals.  

But as much as this kind of comical image may seem to diminish the seriousness of the situation, as a matter of fact the production of humorous and surprisingly light-hearted art pieces in response to natural disasters has always been commonplace in Japan. In her book Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923, Gennifer Weisenfeld discusses various examples of humorous artworks created in the wake of historic disasters in Japan. Much of these artworks depict comical causes of such disasters, such as the childish misbehaviour of gods, or the antics of a mythical, gigantic catfish that was historically blamed for the occurrence of earthquakes.

This light-hearted response to mass loss of life and physical destruction may seem strange, but ultimately, it says a lot about the nature of human beings. Humour has always existed as a coping mechanism for humanity in the face of traumatic events. And this trend can be seen as much in older artworks created in response to natural disasters in Japan as it can now. In situations of destruction on a scale beyond human comprehension, maybe the only way that we can truly process such events is through images that depict the surreal and absurd. Such as, perhaps, the image of an ostrich taking a stroll through inner-city Fukushima.

Further Reading

Huismarseille.nl (2022). Yasusuke Ôta’s collection The Abandoned Animals of Fukushima. Accessed at https://huismarseille.nl/en/exhibitions/yasusuke-ota/.

Weisenfeld, Gennifer (2012). Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923. University of California Press.