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47. The Birds of Hope

Posted by T.T. and P.R. in September 2022

The Birds of Hope [1] is a children’s book published in 2021, 10 years after The Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident of Fukushima Nuclear Power Station. 

Three intimate  ten-year-old classmates suffered the great earthquake at a school near the seashore. They evacuated to a hill to escape from tsunami. Then, accident of nuclear station occurred.  The three classmates had to evacuate separately to distant towns. 

A child bird and parent birds watched everything from the sky. The child bird worried the missing father of a boy among the classmate. “Is that child’s father not coming back?” The father bird answered.  “Unfortunately, no. Nature is powerful. Human beings have been crushed by it many times in the past.” (See the image below.)

 

   

A scene in the video [2] of The Birds of Hope. © Fukushima Minpo Co.  

Reproduced from the original image with exceptional permission of Fukushima Minpo Co.

Ten years after, three classmates have grown up. A boy becomes a university student studying agriculture. Another boy whose father was gone by tsunami becomes a fisherman and a member of fire company. A girl is aspiring a piano teacher and a story teller. The child bird is also grown up and becomes a father bird. The bird family comes back to the town by the sea and are watching people who are restoring their houses.

The story of The Birds of Hope emerged from actual experiences of the great disasters. Although the bird story is imaginary, the story surely brings real hope in people’s mind who are earnestly desiring secure life in the future. Now our Planet is facing to the greatest mass extinction in the near future. To secure our descendants from the human caused disaster, that will be incomparably greater than past earthquakes and nuclear disasters, we should have hope firmly in our mind. The Birds of Hope must be a fantastic text to invite rich imaginations into our mind.

Notes:

1. The Birds of Hope was comprised of Mika Yoshimoto (Illustration) and Atsushi Eto (story), and  published by Fukushima Minpo Co. 2021;  <https:// kibounotori.jp/en>.

2. Video of The Birds of Hope;  <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b1pymtYbOg>.