New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. xii, 318 pp. (Tables, figures.) US$105.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-137-52131-6.
The essays that form this book analyze the responses to the natural and man-made disasters of 1995—the Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo sarin gas attacks—and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. The book’s overarching question is: What insights can be learned from considering the various responses to these two critical historical junctures? The result is an original contribution featuring engaged, authoritative voices from authors with hands-on experience with post-disaster issues.
The book starts with an introduction and is divided into political, religious, social, and cultural responses. In the opening chapter, Koichi Nakano critically discusses the recent sharp shift to the right in Japanese politics. The argument is that rather than reflect citizens’ views, this shift has been unilaterally driven by the political elites. Nakano observes that each time the country has tilted to the right, the shift has been preceded by a crisis that gave the ruling elites a chance to push forward their own controversial agendas.
Rikki Kersten’s second chapter assesses whether there actually was a strengthening of the Japan-US alliance in 2011 following the participation of Self Defense Forces and American military troops in disaster relief missions, the so-called “Operation Tomodachi”. The author also ponders whether the results of these joint missions are likely to modify the pacifism that has characterized contemporary Japan.
Chapter 3 by Jeff Kingston presents a powerful analysis of the issues affecting the outcome of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. He explains why 3.11 was not a game changer, and sheds light on how the “nuclear village” has been resilient in the face of never ending scandals surrounding Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and its ineptitude when dealing with the crippled nuclear reactors.
In chapter 4, Ria Shibata discusses the resurgence of nationalist discourse in Japan in connection with the country’s identity crisis and deteriorating relations with China. As Japan’s collective self-esteem was damaged due to economic stagnation and natural disasters, Japan’s ruling elite has committed itself to revamping national identity with a sense of purpose that links the present to a glorified (wartime) past.
Chapter 5 by Mark Mullins skillfully articulates the connections between organized religions and neonationalism in post-disaster Japan. His detailed analysis of the activities of neonationalist movements sheds light on the controversial transformations that have been taking place within Japanese society and the clash between global values and those championed by neonationalist leaders.
In chapter 6, Barbara Ambros investigates the response of a religious group called Tenrikyo to the Great East Japan Earthquake. She traces the group’s shifting reasons for its sustained participation in volunteer work to the history of Tenrikyo and its involvement in relief efforts during the 1995 earthquake.
Richly ethnographic, Tim Graf’s chapter 7 deals with the Buddhist responses to the 3.11 disasters and discusses processes of clinicization and psychologization of religion.
Simon Avenell’ s essay on volunteering (chapter 8) and the 1995 Kobe earthquake discusses how volunteer groups supported vulnerable communities of non-Japanese and ethnic minorities. He argues that although conceptions of citizenship broadened after this crisis, leaders in the volunteer efforts later joined national disaster relief structures, ironically becoming part of those very organizations that failed badly in 1995.
Chapter 9 by David Slater, Love Kindstrand, and Keiko Nishimura offers a compelling argument backed by extensive anthropological fieldwork that explains the importance of constitutive and instrumental functions of the spread of social media in a context of disaster. Their essay discusses strengths and weaknesses of this type of political mobilization, and the novel ways in which citizens become loosely associated in movements that respond to and challenge the inefficacy of the state.
In chapter 10, Phoebe Holdgrün and Barbara Holthus analyze the importance of gender roles when mothers become active participants in movements that seek to protect children from radiation. The authors posit that, to effectively negotiate with local authorities, concerned mothers pursue a strategy of “small steps” but in a long-term approach.
Chapter 11 by Rumi Sakamoto examines the neonationalist responses to the 1995 and 2011 disasters expressed in the works of manga artist Kobayashi Yoshinori. Sakamoto unpacks how Yoshinori maintains antinuclear views that might appear inconsistent with the discourse of the right, thus challenging traditional stereotypes of both the right and the left.
Chapter 12 by Rebecca Suter sheds light on Haruki Murakami’s literary responses to the 1995 and 2011 disasters. She explains how, despite being portrayed as apolitical in his native country, Murakami has in fact shifted towards more outspokenly critical views of the Japanese government and nuclear power.
This book offers a strong collection of essays that will help readers understand more deeply Japan’s contemporary attitudes towards disaster. Perhaps a note of caution, however, should be made. The 1995 and 2011 disasters differ considerably in nature and scope. The Kobe earthquake resulted in some 5,000 deaths; in 2011 about 18,000 people lost their lives as a consequence of the tsunami—not the earthquake.
Moreover, “man-made” means very different things in the contexts of the sarin gas attacks and the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the first event, a group of fanatics carried out gas attacks on the Tokyo metro system. In the case of the Fukushima disaster, blatant connivance among the nuclear regulators and the electric company, institutional complacency, and systematic cover-ups of nuclear mishaps were responsible for incubating a compound catastrophe that affects not only people in Fukushima but Japanese society at large: as of 2016, there are still more than 100,000 nuclear evacuees. Furthermore, the widespread health and environmental consequences of radioactive contamination confronts Japanese society with ethical, medical, and technological questions that differ ostensibly from the ones raised by the events of 1995. These qualitative differences should be kept in mind along with the common patterns and linkages.
That being said, these timely essays succeed in contextualizing and making sense of the recent political, religious, and sociocultural responses to catastrophe, and the collection is an important contribution to the multidisciplinary understanding of social struggle, crisis, and disaster in contemporary Japan.
Pablo Figueroa
Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
pp. 145-147