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Fukushima, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Maralinga
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
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In this essay I provide an account of a series of commemorative events held in Eastern Australia since the compound disaster of March 2011 occurred in Fukushima in Northeastern Japan. Individuals expressed transnational solidarity through the embodied experience of attending and participating in local events. Reflecting on these events reminds us of the entangled and mutually imbricated histories of Japan and Australia, and the ways in which various individuals and groups are positioned in the global networks of nuclear power and nuclear weaponry.
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References
Notes
1 This essay draws on research completed as part of an Australian Research Council-funded project ‘From Human Rights to Human Security: Changing Paradigms for Dealing with Inequality in the Asia-Pacific Region’ (FT0992328). I would like to express my thanks to Kazuyo Preston and Tim Wright for permission to reproduce their photographs and posters. I am also grateful to Laura Hein (editor, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus), my co-editor Alexander Brown, and the journal's reviewers for constructive comments on earlier drafts.
2 Mark Willacy, Fukushima: Japan's Tsunami and the Inside Story of the Nuclear Meltdown, Sydney, Pan Macmillan Australia, 2013.
3 See also: Vera Mackie, “Reflections: The Rhythms of Internationalisation in Post-Disaster Japan”, in Jeremy Breaden, Stacey Steele and Carolyn Stevens (eds.), Internationalising Japan: Discourse and Practice, London, Routledge, 2014, pp. 195-206.
4 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York, Basic Books, pp. 3-30.
5 I was reminded of the experience of watching the events of 11 September 2001 (“9/11”) unfold on my television screen in Melbourne over a decade ago. Once the abbreviation “3/11” started to be used, this provided further resonance with “9/11”. In the decade since “9/11” the advances in new social media have made huge differences in the speed with which information can be disseminated. Smart phones, for example, make it easy for individuals to disseminate photographs or videos of catastrophic events before conventional media appear on the scene.
6 Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, “Tsunami Event Summary, Friday 11 March 2011”. Retrieved on 2 April 2014.
7 “Japan Tsunami Victim's Soccer Ball Found in Alaska”, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 April 2012. Retrieved on 25 July 2012; “Workers Cut Up Tsunami Dock on Oregon Beach”, Japan Times, 3 August 2012. Retrieved on 4 August 2012.
8 Atsushi Fujioka, “Understanding the Ongoing Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima: A ‘Two-Headed Dragon’ Descends into the Earth's Biosphere”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 9, iss. 37, no. 3, 2011. Translated by Michael K. Bourdaghs. Retrieved on 25 July 2012.
9 Leslie M. Tkach-Kawasaki, “March 2011 OnLine: Comparing Japanese News Websites and International News Websites”, in Jeff Kingston (ed.), Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan's 3/11, London, Routledge, 2012, pp. 109-23.
10 David H. Slater, Keiko Nishimura and Love Kindstrand, “Social Media, Information and Political Activism in Japan's 3.11 Crisis”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 24, no. 1, 2012. Retrieved on 24 July 2012.
11 Slater, Nishimura and Kindstrand, “Social Media, Information and Political Activism in Japan's 3.11 Crisis”.
12 Jennifer Robertson, “From Uniqlo to NGOs: The Problematic ‘Culture of Giving’ in Inter-Disaster Japan”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, vol. 10, no. 18, 2012. Retrieved on 27 July 2012.
13 March 2014 marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon No 5) Incident, almost coinciding with the third anniversary of the Fukushima Disaster. The irradiation of the crew of the Lucky Dragon was a major impetus for the international nuclear disarmament campaign in the 1950s.
14 John F. Morris, “Charity Concert, Paris, for Quake/Tsunami Victims”, H-Japan Discussion List, 19 March 2011. Retrieved on 8 August 2012. Japan: Fissures in the Planetary Apparatus. 2012. Retrieved on 17 August 2012.
15 “Heartfelt appeal by Fukushima mothers”, 17 May 2011. Retrieved on 24 July 2012; Junko Horiuchi, “Moms rally around anti-nuke cause”, Japan Times, 9 July 2011. Retrieved on 17 August 2012; David H. Slater, “Fukushima Women against Nuclear Power: Finding a Voice from Tohoku”, The Asia-Pacific Journal. Retrieved on 17 August 2012.
16 See the essays by Brown, Kilpatrick and Stevens in this issue.
17 To be more precise, the nuclear age started with the Manhattan Project and nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, but it is the names of “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki” that have instant recognition. Oda Makoto, in his novel Hiroshima, translated as The Bomb, was one of the first to explore the global dimensions of the nuclear age, including nuclear testing in the Pacific and outback Australia. Oda Makoto, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Kōdansha, 1981; Oda Makoto, The Bomb, translated by D. Hugh Whittaker, Tokyo, Kodansha International, 1990. As I discuss below, the name ‘Maralinga’, where indigenous Australians and military personnel suffered the effects of British atomic testing in outback Australia in the 1950s, should also be added to this list.
18 Manuel Yang, “Hydrangea Revolution”, Japan: Fissures in the Planetary Apparatus, 2012. Retrieved on 13 August 2012; Slater, Nishimura and Kindstrand, “Social Media, Information and Political Activism in Japan's 3.11 Crisis”.
19 Kaz Preston's Gallery. Retrieved on 3 April 2014.
20 See Alexander Brown's discussion (in this issue) of Chim↑Pom, who transformed a white flag successively into a Japanese national flag with a red circle, and then into a red version of the radioactivity symbol. See a similar morphing of the radioactivity symbol into a human face on a notice for a vigil in Boston. Retrieved on 3 April 2014.
21 “Photos of 11 March Day of Action in Melbourne”. Retrieved on 2 April 2014. See also the UStream video. Retrieved on 3 April 2014.
22 While beyond the scope of this essay, the establishment of the nuclear power industry in post-war Japan was also an international affair, involving advice from such US corporations as General Electric. More recently the Japanese nuclear power industry has been involved in the international promotion of the nuclear industry in third world countries. Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick, “Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and the ‘Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power‘”, The Asia-Pacific Journal vol. 9, iss. 18, no. 1, 2011. Retrieved on 13 August 2012; Craig D. Nelson “The Energy of a Bright Tomorrow: The Rise of Nuclear Power in Japan”. Origins vol. 4, no. 9, 2011. Retrieved on 17 August 2012; Philip Brasor, “Nuclear Policy was Once Sold by Japan's media”, Japan Times, 22 May 2011. Retrieved on 17 August 2012.
23 Australia holds an estimated 31 per cent of the world's uranium resources. World Nuclear Association, “Australia's Uranium”. Retrieved on 2 April 2014. As at the end of 2008, Japan bought around 23 per cent of Australia's uranium exports. Clayton Utz, Uranium Mining Policy in Australia, Sydney, Clayton Utz, March 2013, p. 5. Retrieved on 2 April 2014, from http://www.claytonutz.com.au/docs/Uranium_M ining_Policy.pdf. TEPCO buys 30 per cent of its uranium from Australia. Although a major supplier of uranium to the international nuclear power industry, Australia does not generate nuclear power, except for one scientific reactor in Sydney's Lucas Heights. The decision to export uranium in the 1970s was controversial and brought anti-nuclear demonstrators out on to the streets of capital cities (part of my own memories from student days) and to the remote indigenous communities where the mines were established. See Brian Martin, “The Australian Anti-nuclear Movement”, Alternatives: Perspectives on Society and Environment, vol. 10, no. 4, 1982, pp. 26-35; Helen Hintjens, “Environmental Direct Action in Australia: The Case of the Jabiluka Mine”, Community Development Journal, vol. 4, no. 4, 2000, pp. 377-390; Alexander Brown, “Globalising Resistance to Radiation”, Mutiny, 18 August 2012. Retrieved on 13 April 2014. Matsuoka Tomohiro, “Uran Saikutsuchi kara Fukushima e no Ōsutoraria Senjūmin no Manazashi” [The Gaze of Australian Indigenous People from the Uranium Mining Area to Fukushima], in Yamanouchi Yuriko (ed.) Ōsutoraria Senjūmin to Nihon: Senjūmingaku, Kōryū, Hyōshō [Australian Indigenous People and Japan: Indigenous Studies, Connections and Representation], Tokyo, Ochanomizu Shobō, 2014, pp. 165-185.
24 On the embodied dimensions of demonstrations see also: Vera Mackie, “Embodied Memories, Emotional Geographies: Nakamoto Takako's Diary of the Anpo Struggle”, Japanese Studies, vol. 31, no. 3, 2011, pp. 319-331.
25 Japanese for Peace. “11 March Day of Action to End Uranium Mining: Fukushima One Year On”. Retrieved on 13 August 2012. This organisation will be discussed further below.
26 For the lyrics of Human Error in Japanese and English, see the website Human Error Parade. Retrieved on 3 April 2014.
27 The poster was retrieved on 2 April 2014.
28 Eleanor Coerr, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, New York, Putnam, 1977.
29 For an example of the origami crane as an expression of solidarity, see the photograph of Kawasaki Natsu (1889-1966) presenting an origami crane to a Latvian child on a tour of the Soviet Union after attending the Women's International Democratic Federation's World Congress of Mothers in Lausanne in 1955. “Nihon no Haha Soren o Iku” [Japanese Mothers go to the Soviet Union], Ōru Soren [All Soviet Union], Vol. 2, No 1, 1956, p. 68. On the Japanese women's participation in the World Congress of Mothers (where the nuclear issue was a major theme in the year after the Lucky Dragon Incident), see Vera Mackie, “From Hiroshima to Lausanne: The World Congress of Mothers and the Hahaoya Taikai in the 1950s”, Women's History Review, in press.
30 Japanese for Peace. ‘About JfP’. Retrieved on 13 August 2012. Despite the name, not all of those associated with the group are of Japanese nationality or ethnicity. I have been involved with the group in the past as a speaker at their seminars. For the purposes of this essay, however, I draw only on publicly available information.
31 The poster was retrieved on 2 April 2014.
32 The logo was retrieved on 2 April 2014.
33 The peace symbol (a circle bisected by a vertical line, with two more diagonal lines), was designed by Gerald Holtom for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. The vertical line is the semaphore signal for the letter “D”, while the line with two “arms” pointing down is the semaphore signal for “N”. Together, they spell the initials of “Nuclear Disarmament”. The symbol is now widely used in peace movements and anti-nuclear movements. Ken Kolsbun with Mike Sweeney, Peace: The Biography of a Symbol, Washington DC, National Geographic, 2008.
34 See the photograph. Retrieved on 2 April 2014.
35 See my discussion of Yoko Ono's performance pieces from the 1960s, where there was a similar blurring of the roles of spectator and performer. It is interesting that Ono herself moved from quite abstract happenings and performance pieces to happenings with a more overtly political intent, such as the “Bed-In for Peace” with John Lennon and the constant reworking of “Cut Piece”. Vera Mackie, “Instructing, Constructing, Deconstructing: The Embodied and Disembodied Performances of Yoko Ono”, in Roy Starrs (ed.), Rethinking Japanese Modernisms, Leiden, Global Oriental, 2012, pp. 490-501. Ono is one of the celebrities who sends a message of solidarity on the ICAN website. Retrieved on 5 April. See here.
36 On glocalisation, see: Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2006, p. 281, n. 4. On taiko drumming as a global phenomenon, see Shawn Morgan Bender, Taiko Boom: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2012.
37 See: “Hiroshima Junior Marimba Ensemble JFP 2013”. Retrieved on 5 April 2014.
38 On these performers see: https://www.facebook.com/bartwilloughbyband. willoughby; www.orchestra21.org.au; www.percussionacademy.com.au; www.wadaikorindo.com; www6.ocn.ne.jp/~marimba. Retrieved on 4 April 2014. On “No Fixed Address” and the place of music in indigenous Australian politics, see Chris Gibson, “‘We Sing Our Home, We Dance Our Land’: Indigenous Self-determination and Contemporary Geopolitics in Australian Popular Music”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 16, no. 2, pp.163-184.
39 See: ICAN, Black Mist: The Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Australia, Carlton, ICAN, 2014. Retrieved on 5 April 2014.
40 See, for example, this blogger's reflection on the first Hiroshima anniversary after Fukushima (that is, August 2011). Retrieved on 5 April 2013.
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