“Toyama Photo Senryu” is a media literacy project conducted in collaboration with Tulip Television, a commercial broadcasting station in Toyama prefecture. It was moreover a cross media activity using the TV program and an official website for both PC and mobile phone. Alongside this, several workshops were held in Toyama prefecture and Tokyo.
In this project, we collected “photo senryu” (“Senryu” is a satirical poem consisting of 17 Japanese syllables) on the theme of “Images Toyama television never shows you”. By making the “photo senryu”, participants discovered the discrepancy between the image of Toyama broadcast by mainstream media and their own actual reality of everyday life. “Toyama Photo Senryu” allowed participants to create their own image of Toyama.
Through the website and workshops, more than 300 “Toyama Photo Senryu” were collected, of which 46 were made into “Toyama Photo Senryu Karuta” (Karuta is a traditional Japanese playing cards with pictures and words). Finally, we organized a “Toyama Photo Senryu Karuta” competition as a closing festival of the project, held at one of the largest shopping malls in Toyama prefecture. Now, the project is a planning to move on to the next stage by working on a collaboration with a local news paper.
