Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. xvii, 170 pp. (Tables, graph, figures, maps, B&W photos, illustrations.) US$62.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7213-7.
It has been nearly ten years since the March 11, 2011 triple disasters in Japan, when a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off Tohoku’s coast triggered a massive, 60-foot tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The most obvious tragedies came with the deaths of 18,400 people, the destruction of thousands of buildings, homes, and structures, and the forced evacuation of more than 160,000 residents from the area. Many citizens from towns like Futaba, Tomioka, and Minami Soma have yet to return to their homes and pre-disaster lives. But the government’s response to the atomic crises—withholding facts (such as data from the radiation exposure prediction system SPEEDI), deliberately avoiding calling the nuclear incident “meltdowns,” and threatening those activists who sought to release information on radiation levels—amounted to another disaster. Where Japanese citizens had trusted private firms (such as the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the utility responsible for the nuclear complex) and the central government to provide reliable and scientifically grounded statistics about radiation, risks, and regulatory standards before the shock, the disaster disrupted that trust and pushed many to doubt their claims.
As a result, the meltdowns brought another layer of stressors for Japanese residents: what before had been private, mundane activities became visible, anxiety-filled moments of indecision and worry. People across Japan began to hesitate when accepting agricultural gifts like rice from relatives in or near the disaster zone. Parents debated whether to allow children to play outside in sandboxes and playgrounds which may have been contaminated by radiation and whether to avoid tap water and instead drink expensive, imported, bottled water. In this deeply researched and personal book Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna focuses on the everyday concerns of people in and beyond Fukushima: “Do we eat or not? Do I hang my clothes outside or not? Should I make my child wear a mask?” (28). Where some might dismiss these concerns as groundless, testing initially showed that some 10 percent of crops from the Fukushima area “tested above the current safety levels” (110). The book provides a historical backdrop to the Fukushima meltdowns (chapter 2), lays out the role of experts (chapter 3), investigates the production and consumption of data on radiation (chapter 4), looks at food production (chapter 5), and how mothers and consumers used networks to help make decisions about food purchase (chapter 6).
Based on two and a half years of fieldwork, and drawing on 70 study sessions and 60 interviews, the book provides an important window into the ways that the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns have caused impact far beyond obvious policy areas such as the creation of new regulators (including the Nuclear Regulation Authority) and investments in renewable and nuclear energy. Sternsdorff-Cisterna argues that ambiguity about whether domestically produced food was safe gave rise to “scientific citizenship,” where average citizens began to amass knowledge and assess previously unchallenged expert advice (3). Specifically, it refers to the skills that allow citizens to examine state claims over issues like food safety and to transform their relationships to the government (5). This cognitive shift showed through in new behaviours across Japan. Some mothers, worried of being accused of oversensitivity, snuck outside at night to measure radiation levels in nearby playgrounds where their children might play (29). Others radically changed their consumption habits, avoiding all foods from areas near Fukushima and buying bottled Fiji water rather than drinking from the tap. Additionally, as radiation testing gave consumers a feeling of control (88), families, citizens’ testing rooms, supermarkets, and food cooperatives began installing and using machines to test agricultural and fishing products for radioactivity.
I found it fascinating that for some citizens who had lost trust in claims from the government and private firms, cooperative food producers and distributors sought to rebuild it through highly personalized networks where “consumers, producers, and retailers formed a bond” through transparency and information sharing (130). Other studies of post-3/11 Japan have similarly focused on the power of networks to connect residents, decision makers, and experts during shocks (cf. Daniel P. Aldrich, Black Wave: How Networks and Governance Shaped Japan’s 3/11 Disasters, University of Chicago Press, 2019).
As with any book, this one raises several questions. I wanted to see a more strongly defined theoretical framework for the argument about scientific citizenship and better connections to the literature which sits at the intersection of society, science, human decision making, and psychology. This investigation of the ways that consumption decisions reflect major changes in norms and institutions caused by the meltdowns fits well with previous studies of the effect of nuclear meltdowns on society and politics (Richard Hindmarsh and Rebecca Priestley, eds., The Fukushima Effect), on protest art and music (Noriko Manabe, The Revolution will not be Televised), on how anti-nuclear groups have rejected the formal political sphere (Alexander Brown, Anti-Nuclear Protest in Post-Fukushima Tokyo), and how civil society organizations have formed mobilization networks to alter policy (Anna Wiemann, Networks and Mobilization Processes: The Case of the Japanese Anti-Nuclear Movement after Fukushima). It would have broadened the conversation had this research more explicitly connected to these projects.
Further, while the book introduces the concept that Japanese residents have become scientific citizens as a result of the accident, we see little about how this will impact Japanese society as a whole. Will this new activism result in consumers, as voters, turning against the Liberal Democratic Party, the long-ruling political hegemon, because of its explicitly pro-nuclear stance? Given claims about citizens rejecting state expertise (38) and mocking university professors because of their financial ties to the nuclear village (50), will Japan join the US in facing the demise of respect for expertise? Will networks of better-informed consumers shift other political behaviours, such as pushing renewable energy over fossil fuels?
The book, written in a readable and reflexive way, would be an ideal text for undergraduate anthropology, Asian studies, and food-focused classes, as well as for scholars studying science, technology, and society. It is a welcome addition to our growing understanding of how this man-made disaster has altered societies and norms around the world.
Daniel P. Aldrich
Northeastern University, Boston