The city of Tono, Iwate Prefecture, plans to open a children's library with support from internationally renowned architect Tadao Ando to mark the 10th anniversary of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March.
The initiative will turn an old townhouse into a "cultural renaissance base" called Tono Children's Book Forest that will house about 12,000 books, such as children's and picture books, in the disaster-hit region. The facility is scheduled to open in July.
"I hope it will serve as a place where children can overcome the disaster and grow up to become people playing key roles in the future," Ando said.
The library will be housed in a 120-year-old wooden townhouse that has been dismantled and will be rebuilt. The two-story facility, which will have a total floor space of about 500 square meters, was formerly a kimono shop called Santaya, located in central Tono.
The exterior will retain the townhouse's design, and the interior will use wood to create a warm space with bookshelves lining the walls.
Ando is in charge of designing and building the facility and will donate it to the city.
Ando served as acting chairman of the Reconstruction Design Council in Response to the Great East Japan Earthquake, an advisory body to the prime minister that was tasked with proposing ways to recover from the disaster and was active from 2011 through February 2012.
Two months after the deadly March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that racked the Tohoku region, Ando founded the Momo-Kaki Orphans fund, a volunteer group that supported orphans and others. The group continued to send money donated from around the country to disaster-hit areas, until it shut down last year.
Ando came up with the idea of building a children's library while working on such initiatives.
"I believe reading helps children to think," Ando said. "Smartphones don't nurture their minds."
While searching for a candidate site in the Tohoku region, Ando asked for help from Gakushuin University Prof. Norio Akasaka, a folklorist who was serving as the director of the Tono Culture Research Center. Akasaka recommended Tono as a candidate to host the library because the city had delivered books to disaster-hit coastal areas.
Santaya closed in 2009, according to the city. In December 2017, Tono acquired the shop's land and structures in a bid to revitalize the downtown area, among other purposes, and had been looking for ways to utilize the property.
The city government held a groundbreaking ceremony last autumn after dismantling the townhouse. Two warehouses on the property will be renovated to store books.
Tono is soliciting book donations and has received 17,000 so far.
Construction of the new structure is expected to be completed in May.
"The Legends of Tono," a book written by folklorist Kunio Yanagita, is set in Tono.
"Books make us think that parents, friends, dogs and insects are all living on this planet," Ando said. "I hope children will cherish the spiritual world, like the one in 'The Legends of Tono' in which water imps called kappa and zashiki-warashi [a childlike protective spirit believed to bring good fortune to a home] appear."
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