Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T16:23:21.742Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Disasters, Natural and Unnatural: Reflections on March 11, 2011, and Its Aftermath

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2013

Theodore C. Bestor
Get access

Extract

On March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m. local time, an earthquake with an epicenter 130 kilometers east of Sendai off the Pacific coast of northern Japan shook the Tohoku region more violently than any tremor in a thousand years. The quake was approximately 9.0 in magnitude, and it in turn triggered a set of tsunami hurtling across the Pacific Ocean, striking first the coast of Tohoku with waves of unprecedented height and strength, along a coastline stretching roughly 400 kilometers. In Fukushima, 180 kilometers west-southwest of the epicenter, 15-meter waves roared over seawalls supposedly protecting a nuclear reactor built just a few meters from the ocean's edge, starting a chain of events that resulted in an explosion the following day that began the release of radioactive materials (which continues still), sparking high anxiety if not palpable panic in Tokyo, the center of which is 240 kilometers to the south-southwest of the Fukushima nuclear complex.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 72 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 763 - 782
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Akasaka, Norio, Oguma, Eiji, and Yamauchi, Akemi. 2011. Tōhoku saisei [Tohoku rebirth]. Tōkyō: Īsuto Puresu.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun, and Kopytoff, Igor, eds. 1988. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
BBC News. 2005. “Indonesia Quake Toll Jumps Again.” January 25. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4204385.stm (accessed July 30, 2013).Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Befu, Harumi. 1980. “The Group Model of Japanese Society and an Alternative.” Rice University Studies. 66(1):169–88.Google Scholar
Benedict, Ruth. 1946. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Bestor, Theodore C. 2000. “How Sushi Went Global.” Foreign Policy. November 1. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2000/11/01/how_sushi_went_global (accessed September 25, 2013).Google Scholar
Bestor, Theodore C.. 2004. Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.10.1515/9781503621749Google Scholar
Caton, Steven C. 1999. “Anger Now Be Thy Song: The Anthropology of an Event.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Duus, Peter 2012. “Dealing With Disaster.” In Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan's 3/11, ed. Kingston, Jeff, 175–87. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
EERI (Earthquake Engineering Research Institute). 2011. “Learning from Earthquakes: The Japan Tohoku Tsunami of March 11, 2011.” EERI Special Earthquake Report. November. http://www.eqclearinghouse.org/2011-03-11-sendai/files/2011/11/Japan-eq-report-tsunami2.pdf (accessed September 26, 2013).Google Scholar
Fackler, Martin 2011. “Aneyoshi Journal: Tsunami Warnings, Written in Stone.” New York Times. April 20. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html?pagewanted=all (accessed October 15, 2013).Google Scholar
Farmer, Paul. 2004. “An Anthropology of Structural Violence.” Current Anthropology 45(3):305–25.10.1086/382250Google Scholar
Fisch, Michael. Forthcoming. “Mediations on the ‘Unimaginable’ (Soteigai).” In The Space of Disaster, ed. Solomon, Erez Golani. Tel Aviv: Resling Publishing.Google Scholar
Gill, Tom, Steger, Brigitte, and H. Slater, David, eds. 2013a. Higashi-Nihon daishinsai no jinruigaku. Tsunami, genpatsu jiko to hisaisha-tachi no ‘sono go’ [Anthropology of the East-Japan great earthquake disaster. The aftermath of the tsunami and nuclear disasters for the victims]. Kyoto: Jinbun Shoin.Google Scholar
Gill, Tom, Steger, Brigitte, and H. Slater, David. 2013b. Japan Copes with Calamity: Ethnographies of the Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disasters of March 2011. Oxford: Peter Lang.10.3726/978-3-0353-0530-2Google Scholar
Kingston, Jeff, ed. 2012. Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan's 3/11. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Miller, Ian Jared. 2011. “Bitter Legacy, Injured Coast.” New York Times. March 19.Google Scholar
Nakane Chie. 1970. Japanese Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
National Police Agency of Japan: Emergency Disaster Countermeasures Headquarters. n.d. “Damage Situation and Police Countermeasures Associated with 2011 Tohoku District - Off the Pacific Ocean Earthquake September 11, 2013.” http://www.npa.go.jp/archive/keibi/biki/higaijokyo_e.pdf (accessed September 14, 2013).Google Scholar
New York Times. 2009. “Sichuan Earthquake.” May 6. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/earthquakes/sichuan_province_china/index.html (accessed July 30, 2013).Google Scholar
Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
NPR. 2007. “Floods Leave Millions Homeless in India, Bangladesh.” August 3. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12481422 (accessed July 30, 2013).Google Scholar
Okada, Takumi. 2011. “‘Kizuna’ Selected as 2011's Kanji of the Year.” Asahi Shimbun. December 12. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201112120055 (accessed July 14, 2013).Google Scholar
Ouwehand, Cornelius. 1964. Namazu-e and Their Themes: An Interpretative Approach to Some Aspects of Japanese Folk Religion. Leiden: E.J. Brill.Google Scholar
Samuels, Richard J. 2013. 3.11: Disaster and Change in Japan. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Slater, David H., Keiko, Nishimura, and Kindstrand, Love. 2012. “Social Media, Information, and Political Activism in Japan's 3.11 Crisis.” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 10(24, no. 1). http://www.japanfocus.org/-Nishimura-Keiko/3762 (accessed September 26, 2013).Google Scholar
Smits, Gregory. 2011. “Danger in the Lowground: Historical Context for the March 11, 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami.” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 9(20, no. 4). http://www.japanfocus.org/-Gregory-Smits/3531 (accessed September 26, 2013).Google Scholar
Sternsdorff Cisterna, Nicolas. 2013. “Searching for Safe Food in Post-Fukushima Japan.” Unpublished paper presented to the Political Ecology Working Group, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Takahashi, Satsuki. 2011. “Fourfold Disaster Renovation and Restoration in Post-Tsunami Coastal Japan.” Anthropology News 52(7):5, 11.Google Scholar
Takeuchi, Hirotaka, and Stone, Victor. 2012. “The Great East Japan Earthquake (A).” Harvard Business School Case 712-480. April (revised January 2013).Google Scholar
Takeuchi, Hirotaka, Nonomura, Kenichi, Neuenschwander, Dena, Ricci, Meghan, Roth, David, Schoch, Kate, and Vartanov, Sergey. 2012. “The Great East Japan Earthquake (B): Fast Retailing Group's Response.” Harvard Business School Supplement 713-439. November (revised July 2013).Google Scholar
Takeuchi, Hirotaka, Sakai, Yukiko, Agonafir, Rebecca, Cholewinski, Peter, Kean, Allison, and Kloeblen, Emily. 2013. “The Great East Japan Earthquake (C): Ishinomaki Kouwan Hospital's Response.” Harvard Business School Supplement 713-440. January.Google Scholar
Takeuchi, Hirotaka, Stone, Victor, Abughannam, Samer, D'Incau, Sebastien, Driscoll, Jonathan, Hill, Katharine, and Reynolds, Jeffrey. 2013. “The Great East Japan Earthquake (D): Lawson's Response.” Harvard Business School Supplement 713-441. January.Google Scholar
Takeuchi, Hirotaka, Kosinski, Leonard, Royce, Christina, Stetsovskaya, Anna, and Vasilyev, Evgeny. 2013. “The Great East Japan Earthquake (E): Yamato Transport's Response.” Harvard Business School Supplement 713-442. January.Google Scholar
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. [2004] 2010. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. 2nd ed. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Taylor, Alan. 2011. “Worst Flooding in Decades Swamps Thailand.” The Atlantic. October 12. http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/10/worst-flooding-in-decades-swamps-thailand/100168/ (accessed September 16, 2013).Google Scholar
United States Geological Survey. 2011. “Magnitude 9.0 – Near the East Coast of Honshu, Japan.” http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usc0001xgp/ (accessed July 30, 2013).Google Scholar
Walker, Brett. 2011. Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar

Additional Reading

Clancey, Gregory. 2012. “Japanese Seismicity and the Limits of Prediction.” Journal of Asian Studies 71(2):333–44.Google Scholar
Dudden, Alexis. 2012. “The Ongoing Disaster.” Journal of Asian Studies 71(2):345–59.Google Scholar
Kelly, William W. 2012. “Tohoku's Futures: Predicting Outcomes or Imagining Possibilities?” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 10(10, no. 2). http://www.japanfocus.org/-William_W_-Kelly/3703 (accessed October 7, 2013).Google Scholar
Murray, Andrea. 2012. “Footprints in Paradise.” PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Sand, Jordan. 2012. “Living with Uncertainty after March 11, 2011.” Journal of Asian Studies 71(2):313–18.Google Scholar
Schencking, Charles. 2013. The Great Kanto Earthquake and the Chimera of National Reconstruction in Japan. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Weisenfeld, Gennifer. 2012. Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan's Great Earthquake of 1923. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Yamashita, Shinji. 2012. “The Public Anthropology of Disaster: An Introductory Note.” Asian Anthropology 11(1):21–25.Google Scholar
Yoshimi, Shun'ya. 2012. “Radioactive Rain and the American Umbrella.” Translated by Loh, Shi-Lin. Journal of Asian Studies 71(2):319–31.Google Scholar