This special collection of papers reflects the work of contributing authors to the newly released book Legacies of Fukushima: 3.11 in Context (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). The edited volume addresses the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan, taking a multi-dimensional, cross-disciplinary approach to understanding this epic disaster. The book is an intersectional collaboration that is unique in that it incorporates the work of Japan-area scholars, journalists, nuclear experts and Science, Technology and Society (STS) scholars from Japan and abroad, who discuss the trajectory of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in the first decade since its inception. There are 19 authors whose work is included in the book; this special edition of selected papers for The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus evokes that work, and while they do not entirely represent the scope of the material included in the edited volume, these papers delve into issues that any disaster studies scholar or student of the Fukushima nuclear disaster will find compelling.

The award-winning picture book Sagashite imasu (2012) was published in response to 3/11. It combines dynamic poetics with poignant photographs of relics from the Hiroshima Peace Museum to evoke emotions about extended suffering from radioactive fallout. I argue that the work plays an activist role in prompting an empathetic response which raises an ethical consciousness, and that this kind of response in turn generates a broader “recognition” of the dangers of using nuclear power in (and beyond) Japan after the Fukushima disaster.

A decade ago, Japan learned some bitter lessons from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, after ignoring global and local ones over the preceding four decades. But elements of the country clearly haven’t, whether it comes to the atom or dealing with an international event like the Tokyo Summer Olympics during a global pandemic. Because of Japan’s mishandling of the pandemic and new variants resistant to vaccines, whether the games, which a majority of the public wanted cancelled or postponed again, would have become a super-spreader event, trigger a new variant or create an explosion of COVID-19 cases or a combination thereof remained a continuing concern. What’s clear is that Tokyo put political, bureaucratic and commercial interests ahead of the health and wellbeing of the overall public —similar to what happened in the decades preceding Fukushima.

This Diary written by twentieth-generation sake brewer of Futaba, Tomisawa Shūhei, from March 11, 2011 until April 21, 2011, depicts the experience of his family as they navigated the forced evacuation of their ancestral home as a result of the disastrous nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The Diary is translated to reflect the original and only occasionally adds names or descriptions for clarity.

The recently released eight-part Japanese docudrama THE DAYS (Netflix 2023) ostensibly concerns the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactor explosions and subsequent meltdowns at Fukushima. We highlight the problematic rendering of this particular Fukushima screen history by analysing THE DAYS' narrative veracity and reliance on ‘heroic’ disaster tropes, absent-presences, the glossing over of the radiological legacy, and the context of related nuclear accident teledramas and docudrama re-enactments.

Takahashi Tetsuya, a philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo and a native of Fukushima Prefecture, has traversed the devastated region numerous times since the March 11 disaster, engaging in various kinds of activism. An introduction by the translators is followed by an English translation of Takahashi's speech at the University of Chicago on March 10, 2012, and a postscript written by Takahashi in May 2014. Takahashi explains “nuclear-power-as-sacrificial-system” via his childhood memories in Fukushima and the People's Tribunal against Nuclear Power Plants.

March 11, 2021 marked the tenth anniversary of Japan’s triple disaster of 2011. Residents of Fukushima towns which endured the greatest environmental, social, and economic impact of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident have lived with uncertainty about the future for a full decade. Major infrastructure projects are fully or nearly complete, and decontamination efforts in reopened towns have largely concluded. Nevertheless, evacuee return rates have been low in most towns which had been placed under full evacuation orders. As a result, the current populations of many affected towns are less than 20% of their pre-disaster levels, and the majority of current residents over 65 years of age. Despite the huge challenges, the energy and know-how of the people of Fukushima are tremendous resources. Many see the possibility of new forms of long-term viability that capitalize on technology, the age of the population, and the ready availability of land and other resources. What has been achieved so far in realizing these visions has been made possible by an emergent network of informal community leaders, who display a charismatic, soft leadership style.

This article focuses on the criminal justice consequences of the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima that was precipitated by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. Through a process of “mandatory prosecution” initiated by Japan's unique Prosecution Review Commissions, three executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company were charged with criminal negligence in 2015-2016. They were acquitted at trial in 2019 when the Tokyo District Court concluded there was insufficient evidence to convict. Following this verdict, Japanese prosecutors essentially said “we told you so – these cases should not have been prosecuted.” But we argue that a courtroom loss does not mean that the case should never have been brought, for the TEPCO trial and the criminal process that preceded it performed some welcome functions. Most notably, this criminal case revealed many facts that were previously unknown, concealed, or denied, and it clarified the truth about the Fukushima meltdown by exposing some of TEPCO's claims as nonsense. At the same time, this case study illustrates the limits of the criminal sanction and the difficulty of controlling corporate crime in the modern world.

This article explores how the models of medical risk from radiation established in the aftermath of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are insufficient for understanding the risks faced by people in contaminated environments like Fukushima. These models focus exclusively on levels of external radiation, while the risk faced by people in areas affected by radioactive fallout comes from internalizing fallout particles. These models have helped to obscure the health impacts over the last 76 years of those exposed to fallout, from the people who experienced the Black Rain in Hiroshima, to the global hibakusha exposed through nuclear testing, production and accidents, and now to those living where the plumes deposited radiation in Fukushima.

Disaster commemoration serves as a moment to remember victims and honor survivors. In the case of 3.11, commemoration works differently. As a slow disaster, with radiation exposure and evacuation at the center of the story, 3.11 is not yet over. This places special importance on commemoration as a moment for memory, but also for ongoing commitments to research, justice, and health interventions for survivors.

We argue that the post-Fukushima nuclear safety debates in the United States and Europe fundamentally altered the definition of nuclear safety. In the United States, the industry effectively took control by strengthening technical measures as the solution to nuclear safety concerns. In France, technical solutions were part of the process, but they were less dominant than in the United States and were overshadowed by larger organizational shuffles. The European Union, in contrast, engaged in a drawn-out debate over the very definition of nuclear safety, resulting in a stress test initiative that, while cumbersome and frustrating to many, included truly deliberative elements and ultimately revealed just how precarious the definitions of control and nuclear safety were.

The first tsunami that hit northern Japan in March 2011 was a big wave of salt water. The second tsunami was comprised of cement dikes designed to protect against a tsunami. The third tsunami is a socio-political process that erases memory of the disaster. The nuclear disaster that followed the first tsunami has reactivated the dispute over the effects of low-dose radiation. This controversy, which dates back to the experience of the hibakusha in 1945, includes a problem of hermeneutics—a conflict of interpretation—over what is being counted as “data”.

In addition to a citizen initiative to launch a criminal lawsuit against Tepco and Japanese state executives over their responsibility for the Fukushima nuclear disaster, more than thirty collective civil actions have been launched across the country. Thus far, thirteen verdicts have been handed down, with a large majority of courts ruling against Tepco and the state. Despite disappointingly small amounts of compensation, these verdicts carry important sociological significance as they challenge the government's efforts to restart nuclear power plants. This article provides an overview and typology of the lawsuits, showing that these civil actions build on a legacy of social movements organized by networks of lawyers and activists.

The reconstruction efforts following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami (3/11) have sparked a rediscovery of the concept of kizuna (literally, “bonds between people”). Some Japanese authors, however, are contesting and expanding on this notion as a way of coming to terms with the disaster. Through the analysis of two literary works, I argue that 3/11 literature provides a model for Japan's emotional and physical reconstruction through its resourcefulness and alternative vision of kizuna.

When taking up the unlearned lessons of Fukushima, one of the biggest may have been the need for more robust oversight of the nuclear industry. In Japan, the failure of the major national news media to scrutinize the industry and hold it accountable was particularly glaring. Despite their own claims to serve as watchdogs on officialdom, the major media have instead covered Japan’s powerful nuclear industry with a mix of silent complicity and outright boosterism. This is true both before and after the Fukushima disaster. In the decades after World War II, when the nuclear industry was established, media played an active role in overcoming public resistance to atomic energy and winning at least passive acceptance of it as a science-based means for Japan to secure energy autonomy.

The fear of being forgotten that haunts the victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster set in quickly in the months following March 11, 2011. The Tokyo Olympics, touted as the “Recovery Olympics,” has served as a powerful vehicle for accelerating amnesia, on the one hand justifying the rushed reopening of restricted zones and other decisions of convenience, on the other, programming moments highlighting Fukushima in the Games. As preparations for the latter, especially the torch relay, reached fever pitch, the novel coronavirus intervened to force an abrupt postponement. It also disrupted ongoing and special events planned for the ninth 3.11 anniversary. The essay below elaborates on that context as an introduction to two texts by Muto Ruiko, head of the citizens' group whose efforts led to the only criminal trial to emerge from the Fukushima disaster. The first, a speech anticipating the torch relay, outlines what the Olympics asks us to forget about Fukushima; the second is a reflection on living under two emergency declarations, the first nuclear, the second, COVID-19.

In their responses to the Fukushima disaster, artists may struggle with the problem of representing these calamitous events in ways that connect meaningfully with audiences. Related to this is the durational experience of nuclear catastrophe; how can theatre deal with the long term effects of radiation? Some plays have tackled these issues realistically, whereas others explore the disaster in more existential ways. In this essay I discuss two such works, Hirata Oriza's Sayonara (2011 version) and Okada Toshiki's Jimen to Yuka (Ground and Floor, 2013) to show how these plays depict the “swarm of ghosts” in the irradiated landscape around Fukushima. Peggy Phelan's notion of mourning is used to reflect on theatre's capacity to embody the wider dimensions of human suffering after Fukushima.

Amid the radioactive fallout of the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station and across what would come to be known as the Exclusion Zone, Japanese members of the nuclear lobby laboured to contain the political fallout of the Fukushima disaster. This article scrutinizes the profuse rhetoric over recycling as mobilized by nuclear boosters and the wider operations of circularity in waste management in Japan. Japanese leant heavily on the notion of recycling to attempt to frame the clean-up in Fukushima in more ideologically convenient terms. This led, for example, to officials trumpeting plans to ‘recycle’ over 16 million cubic metres of radioactive topsoil scraped from hundreds of square kilometres of Fukushima Prefecture, as well as efforts to achieve ‘thermal recycling’ by generating electricity from the incineration of collected irradiated vegetal matter and the large amounts of protective clothing and other material used in the ‘decontamination’ campaign. By scrutinizing this appropriation of recycling rhetoric and its leveraging across Japan's nuclear waste management apparatus, the article exposes contradictions and distortions in contemporary Japanese policy that have considerable socio-political ramifications.