The Future Was Still Under Construction
- Mai Ryuno
- Mar 13
- 5 min read
Reflections on the 15th Anniversary of March 11
How young people in post-tsunami Tohoku reshaped my understanding of art, education, and community.
Fifteen years ago, on March 11, I watched the earthquake and tsunami unfold on television. The television had become a live stream. The footage kept coming. Wave after wave of devastation along the northeastern coast of Japan. Entire towns disappearing into the water.
At the time, I was living in Fukuoka, in southern Japan. Life around me was strangely normal. Trains were running. People were doing what they did every day. The sky looked ordinary.
But inside, something felt deeply unsettled.
I remember the strange distance of that moment. I was in Japan, yet it felt as if I were watching from far away. The images on the screen were real, but I could not reach them.
A memory from years earlier resurfaced. In 1995, during the Great Hanshin Earthquake, I had been on a train passing through Kobe shortly after the disaster. From the window I could see damaged buildings and the trace of fire, but I was not there to help.
That same feeling returned in 2011.
Except this time, another thought appeared.
Maybe I can do something.
And quietly behind that thought was another one: Maybe this is why I was meant to be back in Japan.
Moving Toward Action
In the weeks after the disaster, I began searching for ways to volunteer.
Eventually I found an organization that was running afterschool programs for young people in the affected areas. They were looking for educators who could support students whose communities had been deeply disrupted.
Not long after, I moved to Otsuchi, a small coastal town in Iwate Prefecture that had been severely damaged by the tsunami.
I arrived thinking I would help.
What I did not expect was how much I would learn.
Learning from Young People
One of the first things students told us was something I have never forgotten.
They said, “We don’t want to be seen as victims. We want the power to make things better.”
Those words changed my understanding of what recovery could mean.
Of course, physical rebuilding was happening quickly. Roads were cleared. Housing plans were underway. Public buildings were being reconstructed.
But another question remained open.
What kind of future would make young people want to stay?
During this time, I became involved with an initiative supported by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development called the Tohoku School.
The program brought together middle and high school students from affected communities and invited them to imagine something ambitious: creating an event in Paris to share the culture and resilience of Tohoku with the world.
Over the course of three years, students worked with mentors, artists, chefs, designers, and other professionals. They developed ideas, organized teams, and built projects that connected their local communities to an international audience.
Eventually, in 2014, they hosted their event in Paris.
I participated as one of the mentors, facilitating workshops and helping connect students with local adults and creative individuals.
Watching this process unfold changed my understanding of education.
The infrastructure of towns was being rebuilt quickly. But the future of the community was still under construction.
What these students were receiving was not only support. They were receiving a reason to imagine themselves as builders of that future.
Recognizing a Pattern
Even before returning to Japan, I had believed that creativity could play a role in community development.
But in Tohoku, I saw this belief come alive through education.
Young people were not only learning skills. They were practicing agency. They were learning that their ideas could shape their communities.
After returning to the United States, one day I received a postcard from Paris.
It was from the students.
Their project had happened. The work they had imagined together had become real.
Later, I began teaching project-based civic learning through Y‑PLAN as part of the TOMODACHI Initiative programs. The program brought Tohoku high school students to UC Berkeley to learn urban planning methodology and apply it to reimagining their home communities.
Through these experiences, a simple pattern began to appear.
Think>Do>Share.
Students imagine ideas.They test those ideas through action.Then they share what they learned with others.
During one workshop, a student asked me a question that caught me completely off guard.
“What’s your purpose in life?”
I answered honestly. I said I hoped to find it before I turned fifty.
That conversation stayed with me. Now, I’m almost there.
Over time, it became one of the seeds for what is now Play Full Ground.
Translating the Lessons
When I began building programs in the United States, I encountered a different set of challenges.
In many situations, relationships seemed structured more around transactions than shared creation. People might come to a studio as customers rather than collaborators.
Education could sometimes be framed as a service to consume rather than a space to co-create.
These differences made me reflect on the places where I was living and working.
The Monterey Peninsula is extraordinarily beautiful. There are stunning landscapes, historic buildings, and many second homes.
Yet I sometimes found myself wondering: where are the spaces where people imagine the future of their community together?
In some ways, the question felt similar to the one I encountered in Tohoku.
How do we create communities that people want to invest themselves in?
A Philosophy Begins to Take Shape
Over time, my experiences began to crystallize into a philosophy.
For me, art is not only about objects. It is about imagination.
Artists such as Yoko Ono have long explored this idea through conceptual works that invite people to imagine different possibilities for everyday life.
This way of thinking influenced projects like Speak Not So Easy, which grew directly out of lessons I first encountered in Tohoku.
One student who participated in the program once wrote:
“It opened my eyes to all the different aspects of life we call art.”
That sentence continues to guide my work.
The framework remains simple.
Think>Do>Share.
Young people today will inherit a future that is uncertain and rapidly changing. They need opportunities to develop the mindset to navigate that uncertainty creatively.
Communities, in turn, are not built through transactions alone. They are built through connection, collaboration, and shared imagination.
Youth voices are essential in that process, because the future belongs to them.
When I think about measurement, I often return to the logic of art.
The value of art is rarely captured through metrics alone. What matters more is resonance. Meaning. The experience that shifts how we see the world.
Scale is not always the goal.
Sometimes the most meaningful moment is a conversation between two or three people that opens a new way of thinking.
An Invitation
The 15th anniversary of March 11 invites reflection.
Looking back, I realize how much my understanding of education and community was shaped by the young people I met in Tohoku.
Their determination not to be defined as victims.
Their desire to imagine a future worth building.
The young people of Tohoku taught me that the future is not something we wait for—it is something we learn to build together.
Today, Play Full Ground is my attempt to continue practicing those lessons.
It is a small but meaningful experiment in creative learning, community building, and shared imagination.
So I want to end with a few questions.
What if we measured education by the depth of relationships it creates?
What if communities were built through shared acts of creation?
What if we trusted young people to imagine and build the future they will inherit?
These are the questions I continue to explore.
And this conversation is still unfolding.
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