Yairi Guitar, the famed guitar maker in Kani, Gifu Prefecture, is using pine trees knocked down by the March 11 tsunami to fashion instruments in hopes of engraving the disaster on people's memory through music.

The guitars will be played in a musical planned for March in Tokyo's Ginza district performed by some 100 disaster survivors. The performers will sing songs accompanied by the guitars to express gratitude for the reconstruction support both from home and around the globe.

Tokyo composer Tateo Teramoto, 65, who is working on the musical, came up with the idea of making guitars from pine trees when he learned that many planted as a windbreak were swept away and then drifted back to the coast.