Japan celebrates the 28th anniversary of the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake

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On Tuesday, Japan celebrates the 28th anniversary of the great Hanshin Awaji earthquake, which left 6,434 people dead.

A strong earthquake struck western Hyogo Prefecture and neighboring areas on January 17, 1995, causing dozens of buildings to collapse and fires to break out in the affected areas.

One memorial service in Kobe East Park has nearly 10,000 lanterns, arranged to form the numbers “1.17” and the characters “musobu” or “bond” in Japanese.

Officials hope these events will help bring generations together so that lessons learned from the disaster can be passed on to young people.

Participants were to perform a silent prayer at 5:46 am, exactly the moment the earthquake struck.

The annual event has been reduced in size since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. But this year, organizers decided to go back to the pre-pandemic scale, which includes twice as many lanterns in use as last year.

However, Hyogo faces the daunting challenge of keeping the memories of the disaster alive.

A survey showed that the number of memorial services held by citizen groups in the province decreased by about 30 percent compared to the years before the epidemic.

Furthermore, there are fewer schools and kindergartens holding silent prayer sessions or evacuation drills at this time of year.

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