The response amongst all levels of society to the Japan earthquake has been astounding with seemingly anybody who had the means to help out, doing so.
Almost immediately after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck some of the biggest corporate organizations in the world sprung to help. We had the Crisis Response Page from Google, which contained its person finder, earthquake map, donation tools and other resources. Also online we had Yahoo! Japan and Facebook helping to get important information out to the general public while Skype made the ability to call Japan free for a limited time.
Also in the immediate aftermath, there was help coming in from Suntory, who made vending machines free to use in affected areas. Softbank, DoCoMo and KDDI all made their mobile networks free to send MMS mails on and Kuroneko worked fast to enable package sending to the north of Japan.
Many have also pledged money and via a helpful Japanese blogger, we were able to pull together a list of who has given.
Companies that gave
Sony and Panasonic each donated 300 million yen in addition to radio equipment. The financial assistance matches that made separately by Sony staff.
Japan Post has raised another 300 million yen.
Banks, including Mizuho, Sumitomo, Mitsubishi Tokyo UFJ and Nomura Holdings donated an average of 100 million yen each.
Seven Eleven had over 30,000 bottles of mineral water, 14 tons of bananas and numerous other foodstuffs packaged and sent north in their delivery trucks. Something similar was also done by Lawson and Ministop.
Other food and beverage donations came from Nisshin (1.3 million cups of ramen), Kirin (150,000 bottles of water and tea) and Asahi Beer (amount unclear).
Sekisui House delivered 200 bags of rice, 2,800 bottles of water and over 150 tents for temporary shelter.
Retail giants Mitsukoshi and Aeon put together clothing supplies in addition to other essentials such as diapers, blankets and more.
Uniqlo founder Tadashi Yanai is Japan’s richest person and aside from a personal donation of over 1 billion yen, his company has supplied products such as clothing from its HeatTech range worth another 400 million yen.
Japan’s electronics companies have had a hard time of it in the market over the last few years, but NEC, Nikon, Mitsubishi and Konica Minolta donated 1 million yen each. Other notables in the tech sector included Rakuten with a 3 million yen donation and DeNA with 1 million yen.
Stars that Donated
Japan’s idols have been getting involved too. Of the famous donations, Ayumi Hamasaki, Namie Amuro, CLAY, Exile and the group behind AKB48 all made financial contributions. Current K-pop wunderkids KARA have also pledged the proceeds of their next single release (to come out on the 23rd of this month) towards relief efforts.
This is, of course, aside from the hard work of individuals to fix roads, telecomunication lines and train tracks in order to get things moving again. Not to mention the personal dedication of the Fukushima 50 – the individuals working at the Daiichi nuclear plant in order to bring the hazardous situation there back under control.
As mentioned, this list is only a highlight of the efforts made across Japanese society and indeed from outside of the country. You can get a much more comprehensive list here, but you’ll need to be able to read Japanese to understand everything.
Find out more about donating on our donations page.
Image credit: RINGCHEN / Wikimedia
