Does America Need More Wa?
The 2011 TÅhoku, Japan, earthquake and tsunami killed thousands of people and damaged more than one million buildings, including the Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Plant. The initial crisis of rebuilding that region quickly became a question of how to rebuild, including how to rebuild the fractured spirit of the place. âThis spirit and awareness of the importance of collective memory and the risk of losing that âcapacity for making,â which is an expression of social cohesion,â Rossella Menegazzo writes in the introduction to Wa: The Essence of Japanese Design turned TÅhoku into a center of design as âsocial interaction.â The fallout of that terrible crisis was a purposeful turning back to the idea of Wa, the
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