Culture, Place, and Nature. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2023. US$35.00, paper. ISBN 9780295751344.
Fukushima Futures: Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape examines the life and struggles of Japanese fishing families both before and after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Satsuki Takahashi, an American-trained anthropologist, employs a multi-site ethnographic approach to underscore how fishing communities cope with an uncertain future around the Joban Sea area, that is, the sea of Fukushima and Ibaraki. Throughout her case study, these uncertainties stem from declining marine resources, economic downturns, or long-term radioactive contamination.
The book is divided into two sections, one pre-dating and one post-dating the author’s fieldwork in Fukushima. In the first section, Takahashi explores how the neighbouring fishing towns of Minato and Hama have repeatedly—and going back long before 2011—faced the nefarious effects of both natural and man-made disasters. She examines how the impacts of neoliberal reforms, especially the cutback of subsidies for the Fisheries Agency, have created a culture of precarity and self-responsibility that would later echo the challenges imposed by the 2011 nuclear disaster. Within this context, she puts forward the ambivalent gender roles of fishing communities, where mothers are expected to provide unconditional support to their families, as well as to the “nation’s struggling fishing industry” (56). The second half of the book focuses on the aftermath of the nuclear disaster. Takahashi first demonstrates how the fishing communities’ oceanographic knowledge clashed with state discourse on radioactive contamination, as well as with the governmental policies of revitalization. Regarding the social and health effects of radiation dangers, she devotes numerous pages to the contested notion of a “harmful rumour” (fūhyō higai), a specific state-centric conceptualization of harm that blames consumers for refusing to purchase supposedly safe food products. The book ends with an exploration of the ambiguous performances surrounding the future, especially in relation to state efforts to push renewable and sustainable forms of energy in Fukushima.
In terms of strengths, the book provides an accessible introduction to the culture of fishing communities in northeastern Japan, as well as a clear presentation of the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The writing is palatable and devoid of jargon, which makes it well suited for undergraduate students from different disciplines. Takahashi’s book is further rendered unique by the fact that the author had already done fieldwork with the communities later affected by the nuclear disaster. Indeed, some of her material was first gathered in 2006 to 2007. This allows her to brilliantly weave the “entangled yet distinct stories of survival” (1) that are found both before and after various catastrophes. The author traces interesting parallels with the fishing communities’ “experience-based knowledge of survival” (86) to explore the repeated nefarious effects of post-industrial modernization practices. The book shines in exploring the patterns of cultural continuations and changes within the fishing communities of the Joban Sea. Furthermore, Takahashi provides an interesting reflection on her own subjectivity as an ethnographer, especially as to her worries about the health impacts of radiation. This allows her to probe the “little scientific information on safety” (99) that surrounds claims to “damage by rumors.”
While Takahashi’s work excels in bridging different man-made and natural disasters across a complex temporal scale, the book could have benefityed from more sustained attention to its theoretical framework and literature. The book addresses many different concepts, such as modernization, post-disaster recovery, futurism, and the Anthropocene, but does not necessarily examine each concept in an in-depth manner. For instance, the book’s main argument is that of “surviving modernization,” which “highlights how crisis also provides opportunities for the idea of modernization to stay alive” (6). Most of Takahashi’s conceptualization of modernity derives from Ulrich Beck’s work (Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage Publications, 1992) and could have benefitted from more recent anthropological critics on modernization. The claim that “modernization advocates call for further modernization” (104) is also an argument that was made decades ago. Similarly, the musings on futurism could have been expanded by drawing on the rich anthropological literature on time, as well as on a Japanese-specific conceptualization of temporality. Instead, the reader is occasionally left with self-evident assertions such as the one that closes the book: “Questions are numerous, and the future is opaque but also open-ended” (142). The same goes for the ways in which post-disaster changes are conceptualized: “This does not mean that nothing has changed since before the disaster, but it also does not mean that everything has changed” (137). A more sustained dialogue with the vast anthropological literature on disasters, on nuclear communities, or on the contested history of low-dose radiation would have helped to avoid obvious claims. These shortcomings are evident in the shortness of the bibliography, which stands at only eight pages. This lack of academic sources impedes the author in building on important anthropological contributions that could have refined the overall argument. For a book written by a Japanese scholar, there are surprisingly few citations from Japanese academics. This is unfortunate, as the book could have represented an occasion to introduce the works of Japanese scholars to an English audience.
While Takahashi sometimes overlooks occasions for broader theoretical engagements and scholastic literature, her book still represents an important first-hand account of the hardship and resilience associated with Japanese fishing communities. The sustained ethnographic relationship that Takahashi developed both before and after Fukushima makes for a unique perspective not found within other works. The clear structure and prose and vivid ethnographic description is equally sure to engage an interdisciplinary readership.
Maxime Polleri
Université Laval, Quebec City