Funakoshi was a seaside village of about 350 people on the Ogatsu Peninsula, just north of the city of Ishinomaki in Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture.
The tsunami that hit Japan on 11 March 2011 washed away most of the village’s homes as well as the temple that served as the meeting point for emergency evacuations. The wave washed up as high as the third floor of the junior high school.
The Funakoshi Ladies met the architect Jo Nagasaka through workshop about local recovery led primarily by the fishman Koichi Nakazato. After seeing the work the “ladies”were doing on the pendants, Nagasaka considered how to help them approach people outside their small community, and thus their project started in early autumn 2011.
After speaking with Jean-Luc Colonna from the Paris shop “Merci”, he offered his support and the medal was born out of the combination of the polished round black Ogatsu stone, with white Japanese paper cord and Merci’s delicate gold charm with red thread.
The medals go on sale from 11 March 2012 as symbol of the deep bond connecting people with the fragments of the roof tiles in Funakoshi.
WA × merci: A medal of solidarity
Price: ¥1,050 in Japan, €10 in Europe (subject to change)
Participating Stores:
merci (Paris); OPTIONS! (Amsterdam); CIBONE, SyuRo, Herman Miller (Tokyo); and others
* 100% of proceeds from sales goes to recovery of Funakoshi through the generosity of participating retailers.
