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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Margaret Mehl poses some penetrating questions about the changing role of relief work over time as she introduces her experience of volunteering in a relatively remote section of Iwate sixteen months after the 3.11 disasters. She provides an unusual glimpse of the on-going relief effort and the challenges that both volunteers and relief groups face in the redefinition of their priorities and practices as local needs on the ground move away from immediate survival relief and beyond the digging out of mud and debris. Through reflexive questioning of her own volunteer activities, she forces us to rethink the role and motivations of NPOs and of volunteers where the line between relief work and “disaster tourism” begins to blur. Mehl asks if some sort of volunteering, including some of what she herself was doing, are in fact little more than “just amateuring in another guise,” a part of a “lifestyle feature” focused more on the self-fulfillment of volunteers than on making a difference to the local areas. If indeed that is the case, what are we to make of it, both positive and negative, in terms of efficacy and ethics? For many people who have spent days, months and even years volunteering in Tohoku and other places, some of these questions may be unsettling—perhaps one reason that they have rarely been asked in the 3.11 aftermath. But we believe that they are important questions and their exploration through first hand accounts of actual volunteers may be the best way to address them. The Asia-Pacific Journal has published numerous accounts of volunteer efforts in the wake of 3.11, and these are referenced at the end of the article.
1 My warmest thanks to Rowena and Mike McGinty and Homma Sanae and Hidetaka of the OMF Iwate Relief Project, to the staff and volunteers at Kawai Camp and Tono Magokoronet, and to all the local people of Iwate I met during my stay.
Japanese names are cited with the family name first, ∗ indicates a name changed to protect anonymity.
2 Iwate Relief Project (accessed 18 September 2012) OMF or OMF International (formerly the China Inland Mission and Overseas Missionary
Fellowship, founded by James Hudson Taylor in 1865), has as its vision “to see an indigenous, biblical church movement in each people group of East Asia, evangelizing their own people and reaching out in mission to other peoples.” (accessed 2 November 2012). The Iwate Relief Project was established primarily with the aim of providing relief and recovery assistance in cooperation with local churches. (accessed 24 September 2012)
3 Christopher S. Thompson, ‘Local Perspectives On the Tsunami Disaster: Untold Stories From the Sanriku Coast, ‘ The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 10, issue 10, No 5, March 5, 2012; Christopher S. Thompson, ‘The Great East Japan Earthquake One Year on: Reports From The Field, 1 The Asia Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 10, No 1, March 5, 2012;
Dawn Grimes-MacLellan, ‘Students in the field at the site of the Great East Japan Earthquake,’ The Asia Pacific Journal, Vol 10, Issue 10, No 4, March 5, 2012.
4 Kawai Camp; Tono Magokoronet; for Tono, see also the article by Dawn Grimes-MacLellan cited above.
5 All organizations I investigated require Disaster Relieve Insurance provided by the national social welfare council; www.fukushihoken.co.jp
6 The Morioka Sansa odori was first held in 1978 (accessed 18 September 2012); on the importance of local festivals, cf. Thompson, Local Perspectives.
7 44 households, according to figures by Iwate prefecture (accessed 18 September 2012)
8 An alternative to the “salon” model, may be local drop-in centres like the one that has been created in Yamada by the OMF Iwate Relief team, mentioned below. For a report on the centre (opened in June 2012) in a local newspaper, see here ( Sanriku keizai shinbun, 18 June 2012, accessed 5 November 2012).
9 Formerly Sokei, 90 households according to the table cited above (but I believe there were around 100).
10 Japan-Magazin (Verlag Dieter Born) 180 (10 August 2012), p.9.
11 The e-mail includes a link to a blog detailing recent activities.
12 The graves were not necessarily those of tsunami victims. Already the previous year I had noticed several cemeteries on higher ground than the devastated towns and reflected on the irony that the dead seemed to have been better protected than the living.
13 See here. (accessed 24 September 2012)
14 Kokushitei mukei minzoku bunkazai (accessed 24 September 2012). Kurumori Kagura even performed in Russia in October 2011 (accessed 28 September 2012).
15 Figures relating to minashi kasetsu : “Minashi kasetsu ni todokanu shien: kojin jōhō hogo ga kabe ni,” Yomiuri shinbun, 28 December 2011 (accessed 24 September 2012). See also “Minashi kasetsu de kōdokushi boshi,” Yomiuri shinbun, 3 May 2012 (accessed 24 September 2012)
16 The situation of people who have lost their homes but are not living in regular kasetsu has received very limited media attention. In some areas, including Miyako they can receive certification as victims and could, for example, receive donated goods. In 2011 the local authorities held “bazaars” for this purpose, and these were announced in the local paper, according to what I heard. I was interested in the subject, having met an old lady from Tarō in the street, who was living in a corner of the open plan office of her son's business. Adjacent to the corner was a tiny room she used as a bedroom and as far as I could tell she was well looked after. But she had lost her husband and their home and business, and her son had another business address in Tarō which was also in the devastated area. In late 2011 the woman was clearly traumatized and I wondered how much official help was available for people in her situation. In summer 2012 she told me that she would soon be moving into new housing.
17 Also known as the “kibō no ipponmatsu”, the tall pine tree was the only one of a protective forest, planted along the coast The tree has since died, but seeds have been recovered in order to plant new trees. The lone pine tree has become the subject of a picture book: Nakada Eri, Kiseki no ipponmatsu: ōtsunami o norikoete, Tokyo: Choubunsha, 2011.
18 Timing is obviously a significant issue; Amanda Kendle, “Disaster Tourism: How Soon Is Too Soon After a Natural Disaster?” (accessed 14 September 2012) In fact a British website devoted to disaster tourism, includes “volunteering” among its offerings and describes “Tsunami Volunteering” in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as a trip nominated in 2006 by National Geographic Traveller magazine as one of their “Top 50 Trips”; (accessed 14 September 2012). In the wake of the Sanriku tsunami, an Australian company likewise offered a tour that combined volunteering and sightseeing. See Jennifer Robertson, “From Uniqlo to NGOs: The Problematic “Culture of Giving” in InterDisaster Japan.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 10, no. 18.2 (2012), note 39.
19 See note 5.
20 “Ue o muite arukō” (“I will look up when I walk”; also translated as “Let's walk with our heads up”), Sakamoto Kyū's hit of 1963 and one of the few Japanese popular songs to become a hit abroad (where it is better known as “Sukiyaki Song”), has become one of the songs widely sung in the wake of the Tohoku disaster. Misora Hibari's final hit, “Kawa no nagare no yō ni” (Like the Flow of the River; 1989) has become something of a signature tune, which is also performed by foreign artists wanting to pay tribute to her or even to Japan in general.
21 The Ishinomori Mangattan Museum was opened in 2001 to commemorate the work of the prolific manga artist Ishinomori Shōtarō (1938-1998). It is scheduled to reopen from 17 November to 1 December 2011, then to reopen with completely restored indoor exhibitions on 23 March 2013. (includes link to bilingual brochure; accessed 5 November 2012). There is another museum dedicated to Ishinomori; the Shotaro Ishinomori Memorial Museum in Tome City, Miyagi Prefecture.
22 See Wayne Booth. For the Love of It: Amateuring and Its Rivals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Booth uses “amateuring” for engaging in activities as an amateur, for the pleasure of doing so.
23 Booth. For the Love of It; see especially his reflections on amateuring versus volunteering to help others, pp. 63-65 and “Hearing with Your Body: How Playing Transforms Listening”, pp.149-157.
24 Interestingly, one of my fellow volunteers, a man from Kanagawa prefecture, mentioned the possible usefulness of his experience in Tohoku when disaster strikes in the Kanto region as one of the potential benefits of volunteering.
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