NEW DELHI ¨C Japanese experts have been helping Sri Lanka restore a huge volume of flood-soaked court documents.

Late last November, the island nation in the Indian Ocean was hit by Cyclone Ditwah, affecting more than 2.2 million people and leaving some 820 of them dead or missing.

According to the Japanese Embassy in Colombo, more than 170,000 documents at a court in the city of Kandy, including papers on pending cases, were soaked in floodwater.

Responding to the Sri Lankan government¡¯s request for assistance with restoring the documents, Tokyo in March dispatched specialists including Yosei Kozuma, chief of the Cultural Heritage Disaster Risk Management Center in Nara, and Masakazu Furuta, professor emeritus at Osaka Metropolitan University.

Kozuma has played a key part in restoring paper cultural properties in northeastern Japan that became soaked in the March 2011 tsunami, and Furuta has been a leading researcher in radiation sterilization.

In Kandy, Kozuma taught local staff how to efficiently use absorbent paper and equipment for the restoration work. As a result, the time required for the process was reduced by about 90%.

¡°My experience in dealing with flood damage, which occurs frequently in Japan, helped a lot,¡± he said.

However, the restoration team still has about 15,000 documents that need urgent treatment. Even with the efficient method and 10 workers per day, it will take some 10 months to finish the job.

Kozuma, now in Japan, plans to return there to provide further support and donate necessary materials and equipment.

Meanwhile, Furuta provided knowhow on preventing molds, which may cause health hazards among restoration staff, from growing on floodwater-soaked papers.