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Contemplating COVID in Japan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
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The Tōhoku disasters of March 11, 2011 were unique in human history: a 9.0 earthquake (the largest ever recorded in Japan), a tsunami that peaked at 40 meters, devastating the coastline of northeastern Japan, and 3 nuclear reactors in meltdown. The unlikely convergence of these 3 events seemed to represent the ultimate Black Swan, a disaster whose scope and complexity was beyond imagining. Nearly a decade after the 3.11 Tohoku disasters, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged to stand alongside Fukushima as the most significant crises of the modern era. This paper compares the Fukushima nuclear crisis to the viral pandemic, discussing how political dysfunction has contributed to the ambiguity associated with perceived risk in these culture transforming events.
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 2020
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