Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T05:24:03.835Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Japanese Seismicity and the Limits of Prediction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2012

Gregory Clancey
Get access

Extract

Almost every destructive earthquake opens social and political fault lines as well as natural ones, and those of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011 are notable only for their local depth and global circulation. Seismicity is a geographically selective concern, but because radiation is involved in the present instance, the stake-holders in debates surrounding the earthquake are much more numerous and spread over a far wider map. In fact seismicity, as opposed to radiation, has receded in most contemporary discussions of the earthquake's aftermath, just as “Sanriku,” the area most damaged by the tsunami, has been displaced by “Fukushima” as shorthand for the event as a whole.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , May 2012 , pp. 333 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2012

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

Keiiti, Aki. 1980. “Possibilities of Seismology in the 1980s” [Presidential Address]. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 70:1969–76.Google Scholar
Yong, Chen, Tsoi, Kam-ling, Feibi, Chen, Zhenhuan, Gao, Qijia, Zou, and Zhangli, Chen. 1988. The Great Tangshen Earthquake of 1976: An Anatomy of Disaster. Oxford and New York: Pergamon.Google Scholar
Clancey, Gregory. 2006a. Earthquake Nation: The Cultural Politics of Japanese Seismicity, 1868–1930. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clancey, Gregory. 2006b. “The Meiji Earthquake: Nature, Nation, and the Ambiguities of Catastrophe.” Modern Asian Studies 40:909–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clenfield, Jason. 2011. “Vindicated Seismologist Says Japan Still Underestimates Threat to Reactors.” Bloomberg, Nov. 21. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-21/nuclear-regulator-dismissed-seismologist-on-japan-quake-threat.html (accessed 4 January 2012).Google Scholar
Cyranoski, David. 2011. “Japan Faces Up to Failure of its Earthquake Preparations.” Nature 471:556–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Geller, R. J., Jackson, D. D., Kagan, Y. Y., and Mulargia, F.. 1997. “Earthquakes Cannot Be Predicted,” Science 278:488–90.Google Scholar
Geller, Robert J. 2011. “Shake Up Time for Japanese Seismology.” Nature 472:407–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gilhooly, Rob. 2011. “Quake Prediction Myth Debunked: Professor's New Book Blows Cover off Panic-Driven 10 Trillion Yen Industry.” Japan Times, Dec. 27. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20111227f1.htm (accessed 4 January 2012).Google Scholar
Ryohei, Ikegami. 1981. “Ōmori jishingaku no nokoshitamono.” Zisin 34:37–72.Google Scholar
Akitsune, Imamura. 1926. “The Great Earthquake of SE Japan, Sept. 1, 1923, with 2 Appendices.” In Scientific Japan, Past and Present [Prepared in Conjunction with the Third Pan-Pacific Science Conference, Kyoto], 141–76.Google Scholar
Akitsune, Imamura. 1934. “Past Tsunamis of the Sanriku Coast.” Journal of Astronomy and Geophysics 11:79–93.Google Scholar
Katsuhiko, Ishibashi. 2004. “Status of Historical Seismology in Japan.” Annals of Geophysics 47:339–68.Google Scholar
Katsuhiko, Ishibashi. 2007. “Why Worry?: Japan's Nuclear Plants at Growing Risk from Quake Damage.” International Herald Tribune, Aug. 11. re-posted on The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (no issue). http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ishibashi-Katsuhiko/2495 (accessed 4 January 2012).Google Scholar
Hiroo, Kanamori. 1980. “The Nature of Seismicity Patterns Before Large Earthquakes.” In Earthquake Prediction: An International Review, ed. Simpson, D. W. and Richards, P. G., 1–19. Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union.Google Scholar
Hiroo, Kanamori. 2003. “Earthquake Prediction: An Overview.” In International Handbook of Earthquake and Engineering Seismology, Part B, Vol. 81B ed. Lee, William H.K., Kanamori, Hiroo, Jennings, Paul C., Kisslinger, Carl, 1205–16. Amsterdam: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kerr, Richard A. 2011. “New Work Reinforces Megaquake's Harsh Lessons in Geoscience.” Science 331:911.Google Scholar
Khalilov, E. N. 2008. “Forecasting of Earthquakes: The Reasons of Failures and the New Philosophy.” Science Without Borders [Transactions of the International Academy of Science H & E.]. 3:300–15.Google Scholar
Kim Boumsoung, . 2007. Meiji Taishō no Nihon no Jishingaku: “Rōkaru Saiensu” o Koete. [Beyond Local Science: The Evolution of Japanese Seismology during the Meiji and Taisho Eras]. Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai [Tokyo University Press].Google Scholar
Kunii, Irene. 1997. “Predicting Earthquakes: Japanese Scientists Aren't So Sure Anymore,” Time, Sept. 1997. re-posted on “Plate Tectonics” http://www.platetectonics.com/article.asp?a=1&c=1 (accessed 4 January 2012).Google Scholar
Main, Ian (moderator). 1999. “Is the Reliable Prediction of Individual Earthquakes a Realistic Scientific Goal?” Nature 25. Nature website debate http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/earthquake/equake_contents.html (accessed 4 January 2012).Google Scholar
Minoura, K., Imamura, F., Sugawara, D., Kono, Y., and Iwashita, T.. 2001. “The 869 Jogan Tsunami Deposit and Recurrence Interval of Large-Scale Tsunami on the Pacific Coast of Northeast Japan.” Journal of Natural Disaster Science 23:83–88.Google Scholar
Monastersky, Richard. 2011. “Great Shock Rattles Ideas about Quake Behavior.” Nature 471:274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuki, Sawai, Fujii, Yushiro, Fujiwara, Osamu, Kamataki, Takanobu, Komatsubara, Junko, Okamura, Yukinobu, Satake, Kanji, and Shinshikura, Masanobu. 2008. “Marine Incursions of the Past 1500 Years and Evidence of Tsunamis at Suijin-numa, a Coastal Lake Facing the Japan Trench.” The Holocene 18(4):517–28.Google Scholar
Segawa Shigeko, . 2011. “Seismologist Calls for Review of Japan's Quake Approach.” Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 17. ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/opinion/AJ201108177545 (accessed December 30, 2012).Google Scholar
Sholz, Christopher. 1997. “What Ever Happened To Earthquake Prediction?” Geotimes 17:16–19.Google Scholar
Simpson, D. W. and Richards, P. G.. 1980. Earthquake Prediction: An International Review. Washington D.C.: American Geophysical Union.Google Scholar
Smits, Gregory. 2011. “Danger in the Lowground: Historical Context for the March 11, 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami.” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 9:20, http://www.japanfocus.org/-Gregory-Smits/3531 (accessed Jan. 4, 2012).Google Scholar
Kyoji, Suyehiro. 1934. Scientific and Technical Papers. Tokyo: Suyehiro Memorial Committee.Google Scholar
Torahiko, Terada and Matuzawa, Takeo. 1926. “A Historical Sketch of the Development of Seismology in Japan.” In Scientific Japan, Past and Present, 251–310, [Prepared in Conjunction with the Third Pan-Pacific Science Conference, Kyoto].Google Scholar
Valensise, Gianluca and Pantosti, Daniela. 2001. “The Investigation of Potential Earthquake Sources in Peninsula Italy: A Review.” Journal of Seismology 5:287–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wyss, Max. 1997. “Cannot Earthquakes Be Predicted?” Science 278:487–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar