Omukai Masako’s face is beaming when Murai Masakiyo and his team arrive at her home office with their arms full of boxes.
Almost a year and a half earlier, her bicycle shop in the central Japanese city of Wajima was flattened in a 7.6 magnitude earthquake and her home inundated during subsequent flooding. The bottled water, ready-made sticky rice, and other disaster relief supplies provided by Mr. Murai’s team – followed by occasional check-ins – will help Ms. Omukai start over.
“I have received enormous help from Mr. Murai. This is also from him,” Ms. Omukai says, pointing her finger at a down vest she is wearing that is perfect for the chilly morning.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
Before the devastating 1995 Kobe earthquake, Japan lacked a robust tradition of volunteerism. These days, volunteer leaders are heeding the call.
She considers herself fortunate to receive assistance to recover from the Jan. 1, 2024, quake, which killed at least 240 people on the Noto Peninsula and destroyed more than 17,000 buildings. Torrential rains nine months later also pummeled the devastated region amid its slow recovery from the temblor. “There are many shocking events I cannot speak of,” Ms. Omukai says quietly.
Ever since the powerful 1995 Kobe earthquake, nonprofit groups such as Mr. Murai’s and throngs of volunteers acting on their own have played a key role in aiding disaster victims in this temblor-prone country and abroad. As this year marks the 30th anniversary of that quake, which killed more than 6,400 people in and around the western port city of Kobe, the volunteers’ efforts are helping to cement a culture of compassion.
“Those who volunteer at a disaster site … accumulate their experience and build a civil society,” Mr. Murai points out with pride.
A shoemaker steps up
A former shoemaker, Mr. Murai got his start as a disaster relief volunteer two days after the Kobe quake. The nonprofit that he led, Local Support Center for Temporary Housing, delivered food and relief supplies to tens of thousands of affected residents in the central Kansai region. Mr. Murai says he has since rushed to help out at disaster sites across Japan and in about 20 other countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Korea.
Before the 1995 disaster, Japan lacked a robust tradition of volunteerism. But over the next 12 months, commonly dubbed Japan’s “first year of volunteerism,” some 1.4 million people devoted their time to helping rebuild Kobe, according to the government of Hyogo prefecture, whose capital is Kobe. Nearly 70% of them were first-time volunteers. Volunteer groups also sprang up across the country.
“It was an epoch-making event,” says Suganami Shigeru, president of the Association of Medical Doctors of Asia (AMDA) Group, an international aid organization based in Okayama. “Individual volunteerism took root in Japan.”
Desperate for aid
Soon after the 2024 earthquake hit the Noto Peninsula, about 210 miles northeast of Kobe, Mr. Murai and his team raced to the scene. They delivered futons and blankets, in addition to water, rice, and other staples, to affected residents. Volunteers also helped clean up debris and offered soothing footbaths and massages to residents. Donations from foundations, companies, and individuals have funded the volunteers’ efforts.
Courtesy of Hisada Mitsumasa
“People from all walks of life involved in volunteering can meet various needs in a disaster-hit area,” Mr. Murai notes.
In the aftermath of the Noto quake, Ishikawa Prefecture Governor Hase Hiroshi had urged individual volunteers to stay away from hard-hit areas, as he wanted to avoid chaos and traffic congestion. But residents were desperate for help.
Similarly, after government bungling and delays in responding to the 1995 earthquake, tens of thousands of people flocked to pitch in. In Kobe, AMDA placed about 1,500 medical volunteers at various sites.
Hisada Mitsumasa was among the volunteers who came to Kobe three decades ago. Mr. Hisada, a teacher in the central city of Nagoya at the time, brought his students along.
“I had an intuitive feeling that high school students could be involved,” he recalls at a cafe in a vibrant district of Nagoya.
In March 2011, Mr. Hisada established the Aichi Volunteer Center in response to a catastrophic earthquake and an ensuing tsunami that struck northeastern Japan, killing about 18,500 people. He dispatched a brigade of volunteers to tsunami-stricken areas around 150 times; some 10,000 people, from primary school students to septuagenarians, participated, he says. Volunteers scooped mud out of houses, removed debris, visited evacuees in temporary housing to confirm their safety, and brought food, water, and other necessities to residents.
The Aichi Volunteer Center has continued to support children orphaned in the tsunami as well as those in earthquake-hit Turkey. Mr. Hisada teaches at a “cram school,” or test preparation center, in Nagoya to raise money for his volunteer work in Turkey, which he has visited three times since a 2023 earthquake there.
“When I did my first stint volunteering in Kobe, I had never imagined I would be volunteering in Turkey 30 years later,” Mr. Hisada acknowledges with a smile.
Back in 2013, Mr. Hisada’s team made a volunteer trip to the tiny Philippine island of Guintarcan after Typhoon Haiyan battered the region. To Mr. Hisada’s pleasant surprise, some of the cram school’s students and their parents were eager to join him.
Since last year’s earthquake on Noto Peninsula, Mr. Hisada’s group has traveled to that region more than 10 times to join rebuilding efforts. About 400 people, including 150 junior high and high school students, have been involved.
In his high school days, Mr. Hisada recalls, he suffered from depression that led to suicidal thoughts. In retrospect, he attributes this to his poor self-image at the time.
Mr. Hisada pondered ways to prevent his students from going through such a personal crisis. “It came down to how I could implement an education that fosters students’ self-esteem,” he says.
To Kusajima Shinichi, a member of the Tsuruoka City Council who also led the volunteer group Kobe Genki Mura three decades ago, disaster relief leaders such as Mr. Murai and Mr. Hisada are social innovators helping to further entrench the spirit of volunteerism in Japan.
They “work on the front lines of disaster sites and listen to the voices of victims,” he says. “They are absolute treasures.”
