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An insightful study in disaster anthropology, this book takes as its focus the fishing town of Otsuchi in Japan’s Iwate Prefecture, one of the worst damaged areas in the mammoth 2011 tsunami. Here, 1281 of the pre-tsunami population of 15000 were killed and 60% of houses destroyed. To make matters worse, the town’s administrative organs were completely obliterated, and fire ravaged the downtown area for three days, blocking external rescue attempts. Complete with vivid and detailed witness testimony collected by the author, the book traces the course of eighteen months from the day of the disaster, through the subsequent months of community life in the evacuation centers, onto the struggles between the citizens and local governments in formulating reconstruction plans. It particularly addresses community interactions within the post-disaster context, assessing the locals’ varying degrees of success in organizing emergency committees to deal with such tasks as clearing rubble, hunting down food and obtaining fuel, and inquiring into the sociological reasons for these differences. It also casts new light on administrative failings that significantly augmented the loss of human lives in the disaster, and are threatening to bring further damage through insistence on reconstruction centered on enormous sea walls, against local citizens’ wishes.

In March 2011 the Fukushima nuclear power plant (NPP) in Japan was hit by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami which resulted in the release of significant amounts of radioactive material.The incident led to the suspension of nuclear programmes by a number of countries.

\"This book is about the consequences of the Fukushima disaster in light of their technological, societal, political, cultural, and environmental origins. The magnitude of the nuclear accident is investigated in this book in the contexts of politics, economy, and society. The authors scrutinize the relationships between science, technology, and society leading to this accident. Further, the authors reveal how these relationships were constructed historically. This book provides a case analysis on the Fukushima disaster in political, societal, economic and cultural dimensions. In addition, analyses for historically grown relationships between different societal spheres mouthing into disasters are presented using examples of the Minamata disease (Mercury pollution), Itai-Itai Disease (Cadmium pollution), BSE, and GMOs. With this book, Yuko Fujigaki achieves to connect local and cultural peculiarities with generalized scientific information and practices in a coherent, logical fashion to a comprehensive volume on a very actual topic of global significance. In light of a globally increasing energy gap, this book has a distinct global relevance, providing an honest account on different triggers mouthing into the nuclear disaster. This book not only gives a scientific account. It also can also contribute to prevent future disasters starting from similar vectors.\"--Page 4 of cover.

In Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance , Florentine Koppenborg argues that the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster on March 11, 2011, directly and indirectly raised the costs of nuclear power in Japan. The Nuclear Regulation Authority resisted capture by the nuclear industry and fundamentally altered the environment for nuclear policy implementation. Independent safety regulation changed state-business relations in the nuclear power domain from regulatory capture to top-down safety regulation, which raised technical safety costs for electric utilities. Furthermore, the safety agency's extended emergency preparedness regulations expanded the allegorical backyard of NIMBY demonstrations. Antinuclear protests, mainly lawsuits challenging restarts, incurred additional social acceptance costs. Increasing costs undermined pronuclear actors' ability to implement nuclear power policy and caused a rift inside the \"nuclear village.\" Small nuclear safety administration reforms were, in fact, game changers for nuclear power politics in Japan. Koppenborg's findings contribute to the vibrant conversations about the rise of independent regulatory agencies, crisis as a mechanism for change, and the role of nuclear power amid global interest in decarbonizing our energy supply.

\"This collection of essays by an international group of leading experts on Japanese religion, anthropology, history, literature and music presents new research and thinking on the long and complex relationship between culture and disaster in Japan, one of the most 'disaster-prone' countries in the world. Focusing first on responses to the triple disasters of March 2011, the book then puts the topic in a wider historical context by looking at responses to earlier disasters, both natural and man-made, including the great quakes of 1995 and 1923 and the atomic bombings of 1945. This wide-ranging 'double structure' enables an in-depth understanding of the complexities of the issues involved that goes well beyond the clichâes and the headlines\"--Provided by publisher.

The March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan plunged the country into a state of crisis. As the nation struggled to recover from a record breaking magnitude 9 earthquake and a tsunami that was as high as thirty-eight meters in some places, news trickled out that Fukushima had experienced meltdowns in three reactors. These tragic catastrophes claimed some 20,000 lives, initially displacing some 500,000 people and overwhelming Japan's formidable disaster preparedness. This book brings together the analysis and insights of a group of distinguished experts on Japan to examine what happened, how various institutions and actors responded and what lessons can be drawn from Japan’s disaster. The contributors, many of whom experienced the disaster first hand, assess the wide-ranging repercussions of this catastrophe and how it is already reshaping Japanese culture, politics, energy policy, and urban planning. 'The triple disasters of 11 March 2011 will change the face of Japan and this is the best place to understand how. This timely and excellent publication is packed with important insights into the consequences of these disasters and challenges mainstream media views and misperceptions concerning PM Kan’s disaster management.' - Sven Saaler, Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan \" One of the most impressive and memorable features of the book edited by Kingston is its tone of immediacy: the various contributors draw on many years of scholarly insight and experience to describe events and scenarios in a style of narrative that aspires beyond common journalistic analysis.\" – Keith Jackson, SOAS, University of London Jeff Kingston is Professor of History and Director of Asian Studies at Temple University, Japan. He is the author of Japan's Quiet Transformation (2004) and Contemporary Japan (2011). Introduction, Jeff Kingston Part I. Disaster: Reports from Tohoku 1. Tohoku Diary: Reportage on the Tohoku Disaster, Gerald Curtis 2. Recovery in Tohoku, John F. Morris Part II. Volunteerism, Civil Society and Media 3. From Kobe to Tohoku: The Potential and the Peril of a Volunteer Infrastructure, Simon Avenell 4. Civil Society and the Triple Disasters: Revealed Strengths and Weaknesses, Yuko Kawato, Robert Pekkanen and Yutaka Tsujinaka 5. Social Media in Disaster Japan, David H. Slater, Nishimura Keiko and Love Kindstrand 6. March 11, 2011 Online: Comparing Japanese Newspaper Websites and International News Websites, Leslie M. Tkach-Kawasaki Part III. Energy 7. Networks of Power: Institutions and Local Residents in Post-Tohoku Japan, Daniel P. Aldrich 8. Hard Choices: Japan's Post-Fukushima Energy Policy in the 21st Century, Paul J. Scalise 9. Fukushima and the Political Economy of Power Policy in Japan, Andrew Dewitt, Iida Tetsunari and Masuru Kaneko Part IV. History and Politics 10. Dealing With Disaster, Peter Duus 11. The Politics of Natural Disaster, Nuclear Crisis and Recovery, Jeff Kingston 12. Friends in Need: 'Operation Tomodachi' and the Politics of US Military Disaster Relief in Japan, Chris Ames and Yuiko Koguchi-Ames Part V. Recovery and Reconstruction 13. The Economic Fallout: Japan's Post-3/11 Challenges, Kenneth Neil Cukier 14. Ageing Society, Health Issues and Disaster: Assessing 3/11, Junko Otani 15. Thousand-Year Event: Towards Reconstructing Communities, Riccardo Tossani 16. Can Post-3/11 Japan overcome 20 years of drift? Kazuhiko Togo

\"An insightful study in disaster anthropology, The Aftermath of the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami takes as its focus the fishing town of Otsuchi in Japan's Iwate Prefecture, one of the worst damaged areas in the mammoth 2011 tsunami. Here,1,281 of the pre-tsunami population of 15,000 were killed and 60 percent of houses destroyed. To make matters worse, the town's administrative organs were completely obliterated and fire ravaged the downtown area for three days, blocking external rescue attempts. Complete with vivid and detailed witness testimony collected by the author, this book covers the eighteen months since the first day of the disaster through the subsequent months of community life in the evacuation centers and the struggles between the citizens and local governments in formulating reconstruction plans. It particularly addresses community interactions within the post-disaster context, assessing locals' varying degrees of success in organizing emergency committees to deal with such tasks as clearing rubble, hunting down food, obtaining fuel, and inquiring into the sociological reasons for these differences. It also casts new light on administrative failings that significantly augmented the loss of human lives in the diaster, and are threatening to bring further damage through insistence on reconstruction centered on enormous sea walls, agains local citizens' wishes\"--Back cover.

On March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by the shockwaves of a 9.0 magnitude undersea earthquake originating less than 50 miles off its eastern coastline. The most powerful earthquake to have hit Japan in recorded history, it produced a devastating tsunami with waves reaching heights of over 130 feet that in turn caused an unprecedented multireactor meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. This triple catastrophe claimed almost 20,000 lives, destroyed whole towns, and will ultimately cost hundreds of billions of dollars for reconstruction. In3.11, Richard Samuels offers the first broad scholarly assessment of the disaster's impact on Japan's government and society. The events of March 2011 occurred after two decades of social and economic malaise-as well as considerable political and administrative dysfunction at both the national and local levels-and resulted in national soul-searching. Political reformers saw in the tragedy cause for hope: an opportunity for Japan to remake itself. Samuels explores Japan's post-earthquake actions in three key sectors: national security, energy policy, and local governance. For some reformers, 3.11 was a warning for Japan to overhaul its priorities and political processes. For others, it was a once-in-a-millennium event; they cautioned that while national policy could be improved, dramatic changes would be counterproductive. Still others declared that the catastrophe demonstrated the need to return to an idealized past and rebuild what has been lost to modernity and globalization. Samuels chronicles the battles among these perspectives and analyzes various attempts to mobilize popular support by political entrepreneurs who repeatedly invoked three powerfully affective themes: leadership, community, and vulnerability. Assessing reformers' successes and failures as they used the catastrophe to push their particular agendas-and by examining the earthquake and its aftermath alongside prior disasters in Japan, China, and the United States-Samuels outlines Japan's rhetoric of crisis and shows how it has come to define post-3.11 politics and public policy.