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Watanave Lab
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The lab carries the memory of war and disasters into the future through digital archives.
AboutAbout the lab
Passing the memory of disasters on to the future
The Watanave Lab studies digital archives, information design, and data visualization, among other areas.
Materials on wartime destruction and disasters exist to convey past memories to the future, but they are not yet put to full use.
The lab turns materials that have been "stocked" in society into a "flow," and raises the value of information through the communication that arises from them.
In this way, the lab studies methods for passing memory on to the future.
Key terms
- Digital Archive
- A system for collecting, preserving, and publicly releasing photographs, testimonies, documents, and other materials as digital data
- Digital Earth
- A representation of the Earth as a 3D map on a computer, on which various kinds of data can be overlaid and viewed
- Mashup
- Combining data or services from separate places into a single piece of content
NewsLab news
A student won the GMO Award at the 2026 Hack-1 hackathon
The lab released a heat source map of the forest fire in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture
The lab launched the "Syria Archive" jointly with the NPO Piece of Syria
The lab renewed its digital archive on the Great East Japan Earthquake and released new features
A doctoral student won the top prize in the Academic Award (Research Paper category) from the Japan Society for Digital Archive
ResearchResearch themes
The lab studies how to pass memories on to the future by turning materials on wartime destruction and disasters from "stock" into "flow" and through the communication that arises from them. It produces series of digital archives on war and disasters, and creates spaces for dialogue by colorizing monochrome photographs.
*Illustrative imageDigital Archives and Communities of Memory
The lab builds archives that mash up scattered data on a digital earth, such as the "Hiroshima Archive" and the "Ukraine Satellite Imagery Map." It also develops "communities of memory" in which people who experienced the events and ordinary citizens take part, so that the two complement each other in passing memory on to the future.
*Illustrative imageColorizing Monochrome Photographs: "Defrosting Memories"
After automatically colorizing prewar and postwar monochrome photographs, the lab manually corrects the colors based on dialogue with people who lived through the war, comments on social media, and materials from the time. In the process, memories come back to life and spaces for dialogue emerge. Working with mass media, the lab is also experimenting with colorizing video.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Watanave Lab consist of faculty, visiting researchers, project researchers, joint researchers, doctoral and master's students, and international research students.As of 2026
- ProfessorHidenori WatanavePublications ↗
- Project Associate Professor原田 真喜子
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images.
- Top image: “Earth's City Lights by DMSP, (large)” Data: Marc Imhoff/NASA GSFC, Christopher Elvidge/NOAA NGDC; Image: Craig Mayhew and Robert Simmon/NASA GSFC / Public domain (cropped)
- Digital Archives and Communities of Memory: “20181111 Atomic Bomb Dome-5” Balon Greyjoy / CC0 (cropped)
- Colorizing Monochrome Photographs: "Defrosting Memories": “01 Product Exhibition Hall under construction (photo) Ki01 001” 作者不詳 / Public domain (cropped)
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