The trigger was the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011.
Children in the affected areas are anxious, and adults who come into contact with them are also anxious. We wondered if there was anything we could do to help… We continued to search for what we could do, and this team “When you listen to a child” was born.
First, our member Yukimi Doi (teacher) came across the “Hyogo Prefectural Board of Education Disaster Prevention Manual,” which was created based on the experiences of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. In this manual, we found a section titled “When you listen to a child” which we felt was an important message for adults working with children in the field who are in a state of anxiety, and we wanted to share this content with a wide audience.
These “10 words” resonated with those who heard them, and were even played on a local radio station immediately after the disaster. Even now, we receive messages such as, “Although I did not experience the disaster, I remember these words when I talk with my children,” and “I printed out these words and put them on my refrigerator.
Kumiko Hiramaru (playwright) has turned this disaster prevention manual into poems that easily reach people’s hearts, and Toshie Negishi (actor) reads them out loud.Thus, “When you listen to a child – Based on the Hyogo Prefectural Board of Education Disaster Prevention Manual” was born. This was the beginning of the team “When you listen to a child”.
Toshie Negishi
Actress. While a student at Toho Gakuen, she met Kohei Tsuka and made a strong debut as the lead in the stage production of “Stripper Story. In 1978, he won the Kinokuniya Theatre Award for Individual Achievement for “Pimp’s Story. Since then, she has worked on the TV series “Furozore no Ringo-tachi” (83-TBS), the movie “Yume” (90, directed by Akira Kurosawa), and the stage play “Permaya Sumire” (won the Yomiuri Theater Grand Prize for Outstanding Actress), among others.
She is a vocalist in the blues band Toshie & The Blues Road.
We are three people, two of us in different professions, and we look for fun things to do each year. We hope to continue to do activities that excite us as well.
Kumiko Hiramaru
After working as a public servant and a playwright, she is currently working for an after-school dee-service. During her time as a playwright, under the name of Kumiko Shinohara, she wrote many works for children and young people, including “Sora no Murago” and “Tito Midori-no-Yubi wo Motsu Shonen-“, as well as providing theater education.
She is currently involved in supporting the education of Iraqi children as the president of the Peace Cell Project, a general incorporated association.
I hope to do what I can do, one by one, for children and youth.
Yukimi Doi
She has spent many years working with children with various differences. Currently, she is a teacher at “Kiko to Kotoba no Kyoshitsu” (Classroom of Speech and Language). Utilizing her experience in educational activities in the UAE and learning sign language, she was dispatched by the non-profit organization “Palestinian Children’s Campaign” to volunteer at a school for the deaf in the Gaza Strip, Palestine.
She participated in the Palestine-related documentaries “Ghada -Palestinian Poetry-” (Director: Mizue Furui) and “Breaking the Silence” (Director: Toshikuni Doi) in the form of special cooperation.
