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Systems of Irresponsibility and Japan's Internal Colony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Nathan Hopson
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In the wake of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, much has been said about the character of Japan, and especially about Tōhoku and its people. In the early weeks and months, the exceptionally good behavior of an overwhelming majority of Japanese in the face of a disaster of almost unthinkable magnitude was the object of much admiration. Especially in the foreign press, mixed in with cringe-inducing references to the “Fukushima 50” as “nuclear samurai”-if anything, “kamikaze” would have been the more appropriate image-the tropes of “orderly” and “law-abiding” Japanese and “stoic” residents of Tōhoku were repeated frequently even by scholars whose careers are mostly built around combatting sloppy generalizations. Diverse voices from around the world, including those of Chinese netizens-more often cited as a bastion of virulent anti-Japanese sentiment-were joined in approbation. Sympathy and aid poured in from around the world, and the domestic media proudly relayed this news to their Japanese audiences.

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Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 52 , December 2013 , e2
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Copyright © The Authors 2013

References

Notes

1 “Banyan: Japan and the Uses of Adversity,” The Economist, March 2011; “Japan's Catastrophes: Nature Strikes Back,” The Economist, March 2011; Mari Galloway, “McGill Professors Fight Sensationalizing of Japan Disaster,” McGill Daily, April 2, 2011; Suzanne Goldenberg, “The Truth about the Fukushima ‘Nuclear Samurai,’“ The Guardian, March 21, 2011; Marnie Hunter, “Orderly Disaster Reaction in Line with Deep Cultural Roots,” CNN, March 2011; Hugh Patrick, “After the Tohoku Earthquake, Japan's New Beginning,” East Asia Forum, April 2011; Kumiko Makihara, “A Battered Nation on the Mend,” The New York Times, June 10, 2011, sec. Opinion; William Pesek, “The Japan Earthquake: The Cataclysm This Time,” Businessweek.com, March 17, 2011; Abi Sekimitsu, “Even Japanese Amazed by Stoicism of Disaster-Struck North,” Reuters, March 21, 2011; Fukushima Kaori, “Nihonjin no nintaizuyosa ni sunao ni odoroku,” Nikkei Business Online, March 21, 2012; Richard J Samuels, “3.11: Comparative and Historical Lessons,” Japan Focus, May 20, 2013.

2 Ishihara's popularity has been ascribed by some to his bombastic nationalism, straight talk, and willingness to “Say No,” a reputation he earned first as coauthor of The Japan That Can Say No, and which he parlayed into a campaign slogan in 1999: “The Tokyo That Can Say No” (to American military bases and other perceived infringements of Japan's sovereignty). “Tokyo saisei e Ishihara-shi ni jūseki.” Sankei Shinbun. April 12, 1999, sec. Shuchō.

3 Ishihara Shintarō, Shin darakuron: Gayoku to tenbatsu (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 2011); Yomiuri Shimbun, “Kokumin zentai no tsumi da, Ishihara chiji ‘tenbatsu’ hatsugen,” Yomiuri Online, March 26, 2011, sec. Tokushū: Fukushima Genpatsu; “Ishihara chiji ‘Tsunami wa tenbatsu, gayoku o araiotosu hitsuyō,’“ Yomiuri Online, March 15, 2011.

4 Oguma Eiji, 1968, vol. 1, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Shin'yōsha, 2009).

5 D. Chiavacci, “From Class Struggle to General Middle-Class Society to Divided Society: Societal Models of Inequality in Postwar Japan,” Social Science Japan Journal 11, no. 1 (2008): 5.

6 Kōmei Sasaki, “Keynote Address: From Affluent Foraging to Agriculture in Japan,” Senri Ethnological Studies 9 (1981): 13-15; David Hurst Thomas and Shūzō Koyama, eds., Affluent Foragers: Pacific Coasts East and West, Senri Ethnological Studies 9 (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1981). See also Masato Kataoka, “Hunting and Gathering the Past,” Look Japan 43, no. 496 (1997): 39.

7 Nakazawa Shin'ichi, Nihon no daitenkan (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2011); Umehara Takeshi and Azuma Hiroki, “Kusaki no seiki suru kuni- Kyōto,” Shisō Chizu β 3 (July 17, 2012): 302-324.

8 Masao Maruyama, Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), esp. 1-24, 128.

9 Sakai Naoki, “‘Musekinin no taikei’ mitabi,” Gendai shisō 39, no. 7 (May 2011): 26-33; “Ima mata musekinin no taikei,” Nagasaki Shimbun, August 4, 2012, sec. Mizu ya sora.

10 Martin Fackler, “Doubt Clouds Fukushima Effort,” September 5, 2013, sec. Finance.

11 Keikakuteki hinan kuiki no jūmin ni Tōden fukushachō ga shazai, 2011; Tōden shachō ga jūmin ni shazai hizamazuki atama sage, 2011.

12 Justin McCurry, “Fukushima Fuel Rods May Have Completely Melted,” The Guardian, December 2, 2011; “Tōden, ‘Sōteigai no tsunami’ o kyōchō, genpatsu jiko de saishū hōkoku,” Asahi Shimbun Digital, June 21, 2012; The Official Report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (Executive Summary) (Tokyo: Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, 2012), 26-28.

13 Iwamoto Yoshiteru, “Tohoku kaihatsu o kangaeru: Uchi kara no kaihatsu / soto kara no kaihatsu,” in Rekishi no naka no Tōhoku: Nihon no Tōhoku, Ajia no Tōhoku, ed. Tōhoku Gakuin Daigaku Shigakka (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1998), 244-246, Tōhoku kaihatsu o kangaeru.

14 Katsurō Hara, An Introduction to the History of Japan (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920), 26-27.

15 Quoted in Kawanishi Hidemichi, “Kindai Nihon keiseiki ni okeru ‘Tōhokuron’ no kisoteki kenkyū,” 2001. See also Kawanishi Hidemichi, “‘Tōhoku’-shi no imi to shatei,” Rekishigaku kenkyū no. 742 (October 2000): 97.

16 Okada Tomohiro, “Nihon teikokushugi keiseiki ni okeru Tōhoku kaihatsu kōsō (jō): (Dai ichiji) Tōhoku Shinkōkai no katsudō o chūshin ni,” Keizai ronsō 131, no. 1-2 (1983): 40.

17 Kabayama Kōichi, Iwamoto Yoshiteru, and Yoneyama Toshinao, Taiwa: “Tōhoku” ron (Tokyo: Fukutake Shoten, 1984), 17.

18 Okada Tomohiro, “Tōhoku no chiiki kaihatsu no rekishi to aratana chiiki-zukuri,” Shakai shisutemu kenkyū no. 24 (March 2012): 23. See also, Iwamoto Yoshiteru, Tohoku kaihatsu hyakunijūnen, Zōhoban (Tokyo: Tōsui Shobō, 2009), 58; Akasaka Norio, Oguma Eiji, and Yamauchi Akemi, “Tōhoku” saisei (Tokyo: Īsuto Puresu, 2011), 49.

19 Mike Davis, “The Dead West: Ecocide in Marlboro Country,” New Left Review no. 200 (1993): 49-49; Valerie Kuletz, The Tainted Desert: Environmental Ruin in the American West (New York: Routledge, 1998); Jessica Barkas Threet, “Testing the Bomb: Disparate Impacts on Indigenous Peoples in the American West, the Marshall Islands, and in Kazakhstan,” University of Baltimore Journal of Environmental Law 13 (2006 2005): 29; Patty Limerick, “Fencing in the Past,” Diplomatic History 36, no. 3 (June 2012): 505-509, doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.2012.01040.x.

20 Kawanishi Hidemichi, Tohoku o yomu (Akita: Mumyosha Shuppan, 2011), 20. Kawanishi draws from the work of Ishiyama Noriko, including “Genshiryoku hatsuden to sabetsu no saiseisan: Minesota-shū Pureiri Airando Genshiryoku Hatsudensho to senjūmin,” Rekishigaku kenkyū no. 884 (October 2011): 48-53.

21 Kawanishi, Tohoku o yomu, 221-222.

22 Tōyama Hideki, “Nihon kindaishi ni okeru Okinawa no ichi,” Rekishigaku kenkyū (March 1972): 49-55; Takahashi Tetsuya, Gisei no shisutemu: Fukushima, Okinawa (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2012).

23 Oguma Eiji, in Akasaka, Oguma, and Yamauchi, “Tohoku” saisei, 63, 91, 126-128.

24 In Ibid., 15.

25 Kang Sung, “Mainoriti to hangenpatsu 3: Shokuminchishugi to no ‘sekkinsei,’“ Subaru 33, no. 12 (December 2011): 312-313.

26 Sam Jameson, “Closed Circles: Japan Revels in Regional Differences,” Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1988; Niino Naoyoshi, “Tōhoku bunka no rekishiteki fūdosei,” Doboku keikakugaku kenkyū, ronbunshū no. 8 (November 1990): 1.

27 Akasaka, Oguma, and Yamauchi, “Tōhoku” saisei, 68.

28 Tanaka Yūko, “Ko to shite, tomo ni ikiru tame,” Shūkan Kinyōbi, March 25, 2011.

29 In Akasaka, Oguma, and Yamauchi, “Tōhoku” saisei, 78, 90.

30 Quoted in Sakurai Katsunobu and Akasaka Norio, “Datsu ‘shokuminchi Tōhoku’ taidan,” Sunday Mainichi 90, no. 40 (September 2011): 28.

31 Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking Recognition,” New Left Review 3, no. 3 (2000); “Reframing Justice in a Global World,” New Left Review 36 (2005): 69.

32 Inoue Hisashi, Kirikirijin (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1981).

33 J. Charles Schencking, “Catastrophe, Opportunism, Contestation: The Fractured Politics of Reconstructing Tokyo Following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923,” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 4 (2006): 870.

34 Dennis Normile, “Japan Picks Tohoku Site for International Linear Collider,” Scienceinsider, August 23, 2013.

35 Mainichi Newspapers Co., Ltd., “Shimomura Monkashō: Kokusailinia koraidā no yūchi sakiokuri,” mainichi.jp, September 20, 2013.