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 metres, 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 Centre.
