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Introduction: Art and Activism in Post-Disaster Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Alexander Brown  and
Vera Mackie
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On 11 March 2011, the northeastern area of Japan, known as Tōhoku, was hit by an unprecedented earthquake and tsunami. The disaster damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, one of a number of such facilities located in what was already an economically disadvantaged region. This led to a series of explosions and meltdowns and to the leakage of contaminated water and radioactive fallout into the surrounding area. Around 20,000 people were reported dead or missing, with a disproportionate number from the aged population of the region. Nearly four years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still displaced: evacuated to other areas, living in temporary accommodations, or living in makeshift shelters in former public buildings. There has been despoliation of the environment and contamination of food, air and water. Primary industries like fishing and dairy have been curtailed. Livestock have suffered excruciating deaths due to injury, radiation sickness and starvation, or have had to be “put down”. The nuclear power industry in Japan is effectively shut down, and people are enjoined to save electricity (setsuden) in order to cope with the reduced capacity for power generation. This multiple disaster has reverberated on a number of scales - in the local communities immediately affected, in civil society groups who have sent volunteers to the region, in more distant places which have welcomed refugees from the disaster, in the responses of local and national governments, and in international expressions of solidarity and concern.

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 13 , Issue 7 , February 2015 , e1
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References

Notes

1 The articles in this special issue draw on papers first presented at a symposium on 'Art and Activism in Post-Disaster Japan, held at the University of Wollongong in August 2013, and convened by Vera Mackie and Alexander Brown. The symposium was supported by the Japan Foundation Sydney Office, the Japanese Studies Association of Australia and the Forum on Human Rights Research at the University of Wollongong. We would like to thank the editors of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, particularly Laura Hein and Mark Selden, and the reviewers, for their constructive comments on earlier versions of the articles.

2 Kainuma has argued that the siting of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant reflected the semi-colonial relationship between Tokyo and poorer rural areas like Fukushima. See Kainuma Hiroshi, Fukushima ron: Genshiryokumura wa Naze Umareta no ka [On Fukushima: What Gave Rise to the Nuclear Village?], Seidosha, Tokyo, 2011.

3 Nara Yoshitomo, “No Nukes” poster retrieved on 26 December 2014.

4 Richard Hindmarsh (ed.) Nuclear Disaster at Fukushima: Social, Political and Environmental Issues, Routledge, Oxford, 2013.

5 In addition to the extensive coverage in The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, see, inter alia, Jeff Kingston, ed., Tsunami: Japan's Post-Fukushima Future, Foreign Policy Magazine, Washington D.C., 2011; Jeff Kingston, ed., Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan's 3/11, Routledge, Oxford, 2012; Holly Thompson, ed., Tomo: Friendship through Fiction: An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories, Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley; David Karashima and Elmer Luke, eds, March was Made of Yarn: Reflections on Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Meltdown, Vintage, New York, 2012; Lucy Birmingham and David McNeill, eds, Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2012; Mark Willacy, Fukushima: Japan's Tsunami and the Inside Story of the Nuclear Meltdown, Pan Macmillan Australia, Sydney, 2013; Hiroshima City University 3/11 Forum, Japan's 3/11 Disaster as Seen From Hiroshima: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 2013; Roy Starrs, ed., When the Tsunami Came to Shore: Culture and Disaster in Japan, Global Oriental, Leiden, 2014; and Japan Forum, Vol. 26, No 3, 2014.

6 Fujiki Hideaki, “‘Shimin ‘ to Eiga no Nettowāku: 3.11go no Genpatsu o Meguru Shakai Undō no Naka de ” [“Citizens” and the Film Network: In the Social Movement Around Nuclear Energy], JunCture, Vol. 5, 2014; David H. Slater, “Fukushima Women against Nuclear Power: Finding a Voice from Tohoku”, The Asia-Pacific Journal. Retrieved on 17 August 2012; Women of Fukushima. Retrieved on 24 December 2014 from http://www.women-of-fukushima.com/.

7 Daniel Aldrich, Site Fights: Divisive Facilities and Civil Society in Japan and the West, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. For an account of a twenty years struggle against the building of a nuclear power plant adjacent to the island of Iwaijima in the inland sea see Yamaaki Shin, Genpatsu o tsukurasenai hitobito: Iwaijima kara mirai e [People Who Won't Let a Nuclear Power Plant Be Built: From Iwaijima to the Future], Tokyo, Iwanami, 2012. On the genshiryoku mura, see Kainuma, Fukushima ron.

8 Kōtoku Shūsui, Sōkō Heiminsha Buji [San Francisco Heiminsha Safe], Hikari [Light], no. 13, May 20, 1906, p. 6; cited and translated in George Elison, “Kōtoku Shūsui: The Change in Thought”, Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 22, nos. 3-4, 1967, p. 453.

9 Kevin Rozario, The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007.

10 Lynnell L. Thomas, “ ‘People Want to See What Happened’: Treme, Televisual Tourism, and the Racial Remapping of Post-Katrina New Orleans”, Television and New Media, vol. 13, no 3, pp. 213-224.

11 See, for example, Herman Gray, “Recovered, reinvented, reimagined: Treme, Television Studies and Writing New Orleans”, Television and New Media, vol. 13, no 3, 2012, pp. 268-278.

12 See the discussions of the prefix “post-” in such terms as “post-modern”, “post-structuralist” or “post-colonial”. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, Routledge New Accents, London, 1989; Margaret Rose, The Post-modern and the Post-industrial: A Critical Analysis; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991; Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No 2 (Winter 1991), pp. 336-357; Andrew John Miller, “Fables of Progression: Modernism, Modernity, Narrative”, in Stephen Ross, ed. Modernism and Theory: A Critical Debate, Routledge, London, 2009.

13 Gregory Clancey, Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868-1930, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2006.

14 Rajib Shaw and Katsuichiro Goda, “From Disaster to Sustainable Civil Society: The Kobe Experience”, Disasters, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 16-40.

15 Robert Pekkanen, “Japan's New Politics: The Case of the NPO Law”, Journal of Japanese Studies, vol 26, no. 1, pp. 111-148. It needs to be acknowledged, however, that the N.P.O. law also had the effect of reshaping the relationship between state and civil society. N.P.O.s are also implicated in the neo-liberal reshaping of welfare policy, as some N.P.O.s are also involved in the provision of welfare services in the context of a shrinking national welfare budget. Karen Nakamura, “Disability, Destitution and Disaster: Surviving the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in Japan”, Human Organization, Vol. 68, No 1, Spring 2009, pp. 82-88.

16 Richard H. Minear, ed., Hiroshima: Three Witnesses, Princeton University Press, Princeton, p.11. The Marukis' paintings also toured Europe, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China from 1953 to 1964. Ann Sherif, Japan's Cold War: Media, Literature and the Law, Columbia University Press, New York, 2009, p. 47.

17 John Whittier Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995; Mick Broderick, ed., Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film, Kegan Paul International, London, 1996; Yuko Shibata, “Belated Arrival in Political Transition: 1950s Films on Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, in Starrs, ed., When the Tsunami Came to Shore, pp. 231-248.

18 Ralph E. Lapp, The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon: The True Story of the Japanese Fishermen Who Were the First Victims of the H-Bomb, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957; Ann Sherif, “Thermonuclear Weapons and Tuna: Testing, Protest and Knowledge in Japan”, in Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney and Fabio Lanza, eds, De-Centering Cold War History: Local and Global Change, Routledge, Oxford, 2012, pp. 15-30; Honda Ishirō, Gojira Godzilla], Tōhō, Tokyo 1954; Yuki Tanaka, “Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster?”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 13 June 2005. Retrieved on 24 December 2014 from

19 Ōtomo Katsuhiro, Akira, Tōhō, Tokyo.1988

20 “Ano kiji no sono go o otsutae shimasu. Days Japan forō appu” [Reporting on What Happened After That Article. Days Japan Follow Up], Days Japan, August 2012; Noda Masaya, “Tadashii Hōdō Heri no Kai 6.29 Shūsho Kantei Mae Demo Kūsatsu Shashin o Kōkai” [Helicopter Club for Accurate Reporting Releases Aerial Photographs of Kantei Mae Demonstration], fotgazet, 29 June 2012. Retrieved on 22 December 2014 from.

21 On media reporting of the Fukushima disaster, see Leslie M. Tkach-Kawasaki, “March 2011 On-Line: 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; Itō Mamoru, Terebi wa Genpatsu Jiko o dō Tsutaeta ka [How Did Television Report the Nuclear Accident?], Heibonsha, Tokyo, 2012.

22 Wagō Ryōichi, Shi no Tsubute [Pebbles of Poetry], Tokyo, Tokuma Shoten, 2011; Kawakami Hiromi, Kamisama 2011 God Bless You, 2011], Tokyo, Kōdansha, 2011.

23 On the differential distribution of precarity, see Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, Verso, London, 2009, p. 24.

24 Arthur Binard and Okakura Tadashi. Sagashite imasu I am Searching], Tokyo, Dōshinsha, 2012.

25 Hidaka Rokurō, Sengo Shisō o Kangaeru [Thinking about Post-war Thought]; Iwanami, Tokyo, 1980; Rokurō Hidaka, The Price of Affluence, Melbourne, Penguin, 1985 [1984]; Hidaka Rokurō, ‘Personal Retrospective’, in Gavan McCormack and Yoshio Sugimoto, eds, Democracy in Contemporary Japan, Hale and Iremonger: Sydney, 1986; Shioda Takashi, Minamata-na Hito: Minamata-byō o Shien shita Hito-bito no Kiseki [Minamata People: The Traces of the People who Supported Minamata], Miraisha, Tokyo, 2013.

26 Ulrike Wöhr, “From Hiroshima to Fukushima: Gender in Nuclear and Anti-Nuclear Politics” in Hiroshima City University 3/11 Forum, Japan's 3/11 Disaster as Seen From Hiroshima: A Multidisciplinary Approach, pp. 203-233.

27 On these links, see: Oda Makoto, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Kōdansha, 1981; Oda Makoto, The Bomb, translated by D. Hugh Whittaker, Tokyo, Kodansha International, 1990; and Robert Jacobs and Mick Broderick's Global Hibakusha Project,.

28 See also, Vera Mackie, ‘Reflections: The Rhythms of Internationalisation in Post-Disaster Japan’, in Jeremy Breaden et al., eds, Internationalising Japan: Discourse and Practice, Routledge, Oxford, 2014, pp. 195-206.

29 Ran Zwigenberg, “‘The Coming of a Second Sun’: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and Japan's Embrace of Nuclear Power”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Vol. 10, Issue 6, No 1, February 6), 2012.

30 On attempts to reconsider the cultural politics of the memories of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, see: Peter Eckersall, “Tour Performance ‘Tokyo/ Olympics’: Digging the High Times of the 1960s”, Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Issue 23, January 2010. Retrieved on 21 December 2014,

31 Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Viking Books, New York, 2010. Solnit visited Japan in 2012 to meet with local communities affected by the 3/11 disaster and give a lecture at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. For Solnit's reflections on the trip see Rebecca Solnit, “Diary”, London Review of Books, vol. 34, no. 9-10, May 2012. Retrieved 8 December 2014. For her speech (in Japanese) Rebecca Solnit, “Shinsai ni mukatte, tobira o hiraku” [Facing Disaster, Open the Door], Odawara Rin (trans.), at purasu, no.12, May 2012.

32 “An Interview with Author Rebecca Solnit”, in CalHumanities, Searching for Democracy. Retrieved 12 January 2015.

33 See Anne Allison, Precarious Japan, Duke University Press, Durham, 2013.

34 Tawara Machi, Are kara [And then], Imajinsha, Tokyo, 2012, unpaginated. Translation by Vera Mackie.

35 Tawara, Are kara.