No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Martin Dusinberre's new book, Hard Times in the Hometown: A History of Community Survival in Modern Japan (Hawaii, 2012), focuses on Kaminoseki, a planned nuclear site in western Japan. Dusinberre weaves the stories of individual townspeople into the wider history of modern Japan from the nineteenth century to the present day. Here, he summarizes some of the key arguments of the book with regard to nuclear power, and updates the story from the middle of 2011, when he finished the manuscript.
1 Sasaki Minoru, Kaminoseki gikai dayori, 22 April 2011 (no. 114); Chugoku Shinbun, 28 June 2011, p. 25, and 30 June 2011, p. 3 (hereafter, CS, www.chugoku-np.co.jp). In what follows, I have only referenced primary materials that do not appear in my book. I am grateful to Takehiko Kariya, Ian Neary and Mark Rebick for giving me the opportunity to try out some of these post-book ideas at a conference on 3.11 at the Nissan Institute, University of Oxford, 23-24 March 2012, and especially to Peter Wynn Kirby for his insightful comments at the conference. Many thanks also to Mark Selden and Ben Houston for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.
2 Hayden S. Lesbirel (1998), NIMBY Politics in Japan: Energy Siting and the Management of Environmental Conflict (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
3 The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan (2012), Electricity Review Japan 2012 (last accessed 26 July 2012)
4 In an editorial on 30 July 2012, the CS criticized Yamamoto's relative silence on the Kaminoseki plan, arguing that he gave the impression of wanting to avoid the issue during the election campaign: www.chugoku-np.co.jp, accessed 30 July 2012.
5 Anonymous interview, April 2011.
6 Tomomi Yamaguchi (2011), ‘The Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Plant: Community Conflicts and the Future of Japan's Rural Periphery’, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 9, Issue 41 No. 3, October 10, 2011.
7 CS, 26 September 2011.
8 My thanks to Tom Gill for this insight.
9 The National Diet of Japan (2012), The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, Executive Summary (NAIIC) (July 2012), p. 9.
10 All the photographs in this article were taken by the author.
11 Thomas C. Smith (1969), ‘Farm Family By-employments in Preindustrial Japan’, The Journal of Economic History, 29, 4: 687-715.
12 Yoshimi Shun'ya (2012), ‘Radioactive Rain and the American Umbrella’, trans. Shi-Lin Loh. The Journal of Asian Studies, 71, 2: 319-331.
13 CS, 28 September 2011 and 1 October 2011. The total budget of Kaminoseki in 2011-12 was 4.4 billion yen: Kaminoseki koho, 14 April 2011. In a little-noticed announcement, Tokyo stated that it would increase nuclear subsidies to host communities just a few weeks after 3.11: Hiroshi Onitsuka (2012), ‘Hooked on Nuclear Power: Japanese State-Local Relations and the Vicious Cycle of Nuclear Dependence’, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 10, Issue 2, No. 2, January 13, 2012.
14 Since 2010, every resident of Kaminoseki municipality has been entitled to an annual voucher worth 20,000 yen, redeemable in local shops and businesses. As of March 2012, Kaminoseki residents had thus received half of the 80,000 yen that TEPCO proposed to pay the adult residents of Fukushima prefecture in compensation. See David McNeill (2012), ‘The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis and the Fight for Compensation’, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 10, Issue 6, No. 6, March 5, 2012.
15 Daniel P. Aldrich (2008), Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
16 Anonymous interview, 2008. I have adjusted my translations from earlier publications in order to reflect this point.
17 This avoidance of the word genpatsu was deliberate on the part of pronuclear campaigners: see Yamaguchi, ‘The Kaminoseki Nuclear Power Plant’, note 18.
18 Kainuma Hiroshi (2011), ‘Fukushima’-ron: genshiryoku-mura wa naze umareta no ka? (Tokyo: Seidosha), p. 113 and passim.
19 My thanks to Kyoko Selden for suggesting a more sophisticated translation of the first tanka poem than that I have previously used.
20 Françoise Zonabend (1993), The Nuclear Peninsula, trans. J. A. Underwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
21 The kanmai will once again be held from 16-20 August 2012. Other than an arcane debate over the Heian-period origins of the festival—one's view of the exact date depends on whether one is pro- or antinuclear—the week will be largely politics-free. This is because kanmai organizers, facing the dearth of young people on the island, have depended on help from the Kaminoseki town office for various aspects of the festival since 2004; such help is offered on the understanding that no antinuclear slogans will be aired.
22 I am grateful to Peter Wynn Kirby for pointing this out.
23 Wil S. Hylton (2012), ‘Broken Heartland: The looming collapse of agriculture on the Great Plains’, Harper's July 2012: 25-35.
24 William W. Kelly (2012), ‘Tohoku's Futures: Predicting Outcomes or Imagining Possibilities?’, The Asia-Pacific Journal Vol. 10, Issue 10, No. 2, March 5, 2012; Kainuma, ‘Fukushima’-ron; Onitsuka, ‘Hooked on Nuclear Power’.
25 Kawanishi Hidemichi (2011), ‘Tohoku’ wo yomu (Tokyo: Mumyosha), p. 14; The National Diet of Japan, NAIIC, p. 16. Kawanishi's pun plays on the second character of kyosaku (famine), which he replaces with a character connoting ‘government policy’.
You have
Access
Open access