KOBE: With prayers for victims and a renewed determination to pass down memories and lessons, Kobe, capital of Hyogo Prefecture, and its vicinity marked the 26th anniversary on Sunday of the devastating quake that killed more than 6,400 people.

With Hyogo under the central government’s state of emergency over the novel coronavirus epidemic, memorial ceremonies were held on a reduced scale.

Families of those killed in the Great Hanshin Earthquake and other people gathered in a park in central Kobe. With lanterns made of bamboo and paper lit, they offered silent prayers at 5:46 a.m. (8:46 p.m. Saturday GMT), the time the temblor with a magnitude of 7.3 jolted the port city on Jan. 17, 1995. The event brought together about 2,500 people by 7 a.m.

In a ceremony organized by the Kobe city government, Midori Kaga, a 65-year-old classical Japanese dance master, attended as a representative of victims’ families.

She stopped short of reading out a memorial message for her daughter who died at age 6, in order to curb the number of ceremony participants to reduce infection risks. Her message was posted on the website of the city government.

“I prayed for the repose of my daughter’s soul,” Kaga told reporters after the ceremony. “I asked her to watch over us in this difficult time caused by the coronavirus.”

Many events were scaled down due to the coronavirus crisis. The Hyogo prefectural government canceled an event to walk an emergency evacuation route and a disaster drill, while the number of participants at an event organized by a civic group stood at some 70 pct of the previous year’s level.

Exactly 26 years ago, Kobe and its surrounding areas were hit hard by a powerful earthquake that claimed 6,434 lives and injured 43,792 people. In the hardest hit areas, the quake registered 7, the highest on the Japanese seismic intensify scale, for the first time ever.

JIJI Press