A Flower That Links Two Disaster-Prone Cities

Every year since 2023, the six public junior high schools in Aisai, a low-lying city in Aichi Prefecture, have sent their third-year students not just to Tokyo but to Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture—one of the towns devastated by the 2011 tsunami. The trip is part of a conscious push by the municipal government to raise awareness of tsunami and flood risks among teenagers living in an area that is almost entirely at or below sea level.

At the heart of the visit is a talk by Mika Sato, a mother who lost her eldest daughter Airi in the disaster. Airi’s nursery school bus was caught between the earthquake-triggered wave and a fire that swept the shore. The memorial facility “MEET Monnouchi” displays Airi’s scorched indoor shoes and a melted crayon case. Sato tells the students to act to protect life and, above all, to survive and keep living.

What makes the link especially tangible is a flower. A French marigold bloomed on the spot where Airi was found. Its seeds and seedlings have since been shared widely, and schools across Aisai now cultivate the same flowers on their grounds. A student who heard Sato’s story said she now wants to care for “Airi’s flower,” turning an abstract duty into a personal commitment.

The Thinking Behind Aisai’s School Trip Policy

The initiative reflects a growing trend in Japanese disaster education: using lived experience to make risk feel real. For Aisai, the logic is straightforward. The city is highly exposed to a future Nankai Trough megaquake and the massive tsunami it could generate. Standard safety drills, while necessary, often fail to move teenagers emotionally. By paying for the Ishinomaki leg of the school trip, the municipality is betting that face-to-face encounters with a survivor and physical symbols—like a flower grown from a tragedy—will produce a deeper, longer-lasting change in behaviour.

The choice of a flower is psychologically powerful. Objects or living things that survivors associate with lost loved ones can reduce the emotional distance between a past disaster and a current teenager who has never experienced one. In this case, the French marigold acts as both a memorial and an educational tool. It turns a statistic into something students can touch, water, and see grow, making the abstract concept of “protect your life” feel personal and urgent.

The model is also affordable and replicable. Aisai’s government covers the extra travel costs, so no student is excluded for financial reasons. That removes the usual equity barrier that prevents many public schools from adding a disaster-zone visit to an already expensive school trip.

What Other Communities Can Take From This Model

  • For schools in high-risk areas: Adding a disaster-zone visit, even as a short add-on to an existing trip, can personalise risk. The cost can be offset by municipal or prefectural grants, as Aisai has done.
  • For local governments: Pairing a physical symbol—a plant, a memorial object—with survivor testimony makes the experience stick. Aisai’s use of a flower that students can cultivate at home extends the lesson year-round.
  • For communities remembering 3.11: Sharing seeds or other tangible keepsakes from the affected areas can create long-term connections that sustain memory and preparedness far beyond a one-off visit.