Critical Studies in Risk and Disaster. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024. US$65.00, cloth; US$65.00, ebook. ISBN 9781512825374
Experts have regularly failed to predict massive and important events in their own fields. Sovietologists, security personnel, and political scientists did not prophesy the 1989 collapse of the Soviet Union, the 9/11 terror attacks in New York city and Washington DC, or the (re)election of Donald Trump to the United States presidency. Nonetheless the promise of seeing the future often proves too beguiling to ignore, and this excellent new book from Kerry Smith traces how for nearly a century the Japanese government has done so in the field of earthquake prediction. Readers living in the US can feel proud that at least in this one area, America is ahead of Japan: it abandoned earthquake prediction in the 1970s (265) while some Japanese scholars held the idea until after the March 11, 2011 disasters (257). Nevertheless for many decades geologists, seismologists, and scientists in Japan sought to read data from crustal deformation (also known as dilatancy), tilt metres and strain gauges (82–83), and radon gas (244) to be able to foretell the arrival of a quake.
The book proceeds mostly in chronological order, with chapter 2 focusing on Imamura Akitsune, whose early twentieth century predictions of a soon-to-arrive quake were initially dismissed as overblown. Chapter 3 looks at the national research project on prediction and chapter 4 looks at Kawasumi Hiroshi and the recognition of rising risk to Tokyo. Chapter 5 investigates the strange extended cluster of earthquakes in Matsushiro, with chapter 6 probing attempts to build earthquake proof shelters in the Koto delta at Shirahige-East. Chapter 7 looks at the process by which the Tokai region took earthquake risk seriously and chapter 8 tackles the Large Scale Earthquake Countermeasures act of 1978. Chapter 9 concludes the book with an overview of the clear contradiction between investments in a scientific outcome and its failure to arrive. The book’s epilogue explores prediction vis-a-vis Japan’s 3/11 triple disasters: a 9.0 magnitude earthquake (“unexpected” by scientists (252), meaning that “science had been defeated,” as one seismologist lamented (255)), followed by a 20-plus metre tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors 1 through 3.
One reasonable explanation for why Japanese authorities funded the science of earthquake prediction for so long is that occasionally predictions were accurate, driving the media into a frenzy and raising hopes that long-term speculations could be systemized. Imamura argued in both public-facing magazines (such as Taiyō) and in an academic monograph (Jishingaku, Seismology) in 1905 that Tokyo would face a major earthquake in the coming years. Some 20 years later the arrival of the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake—which, between shaking and fires, leveled half the capital—seemingly supported his initially contested claim. Then, in 1948, scientist Inoue Win casually mentioned that his model indicated an earthquake might strike Fukui soon, and two weeks later, it did (63), killing 3,700 and injuring 20,000. These rare and accurate predictions reinforced broader hopes for a science of earthquake forecasting.
Throughout the book we see the power of social capital as Bourdieu imagined it, one in which educational pedigree makes all the difference in one’s career. For 40 years, the chairmen of Japan’s Coordinating Committee on Earthquake Prediction all came from the highly regarded University of Tokyo (17). We see too that Asada Toshi’s status as a professor from that university lent him credibility when testifying in the Diet in the mid 1970s.
The book’s strengths lie in bringing both the supply and demand side stories of earthquake prediction policy. We accompany the individual scientists as they follow, clash with, and occasionally publicly support each other in the field, and we see their institutions, such as the Science Council of Japan (64) at work managing expectations. At the same time we see the many politicians and government officials who have rejected, embraced, or modified the scientists’ visions for the programme, including how the Japanese legislature rejected Imamura’s grand vision for a large-scale Earthquake Research Institute (44). But later we see the Tokyo Metropolitan Fire Department establish September 1 as Disaster Preparedness Day (68), and the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party coordinating with the Home Affairs Ministry (78) on funding preparation measures. We see well-known politicians like Prime Minister Nakasone Yashuhiro giving advice to scientists on how to better engage with elected officials (122) and Shizuoka Governor Yamamoto Suzuki who used the earthquake threat as the core message for his political career (179). We also see sympathetic officials in the police, fire, and defense industries (197) and the Science and Technology Agency (202) as we hear of the beleaguered Ministry of Finance unsuccessfully trying to pull the plug on the programme (248).
I wanted to hear more about the comparative nature of earthquake prediction investments. Perhaps we should not be surprised that governments around the world often fail to kill zombie projects, that is, large-scale investments that clearly hold little chance of success. In Japan, the fast breeder Monju reactor in Tsuruga, for example, lasted from 1986 until 2010 with little to show beyond a covered-up sodium leak and a bill for more than US$10 billion. So too the promise of fusion being “on the brink,” “‘close,” or “successful within the next decade” has propelled projects from the Tokamak to the ITER to the National Ignition Facility, and pulled in more than US$7 billion. Additionally, much of the story fits well with historical-institutionalist narratives of history, where rather than revising institutions on a dime or radically altering the form of policy as rational choice theory might predict, things change slowly. Connecting this story to the historical-institutionalist framework could have broadened this narrative’s appeal.
Deeply researched and relevant for researchers, this book’s brisk and clear writing style makes it a great one for both undergraduate and graduate courses. Excellent photographs accompany the text, such as the after images following the Niigata earthquake where Smith shows collapsed bridges (93) and domino-like apartment buildings lying on their sides due to soil subsidence (94). A last lesson to take from Smith’s work: while few may still cling to the “fantasy document” of accurate long-term prediction, Japanese communities have invested more in bottom up preparation than most other vulnerable nations because of the work of these scientists.
Daniel P. Aldrich
Northeastern University, Boston