Japan’s Triple Disaster

Natalia Novikova is a Language Instructor at Tamagawa University, Japan. She received her Ph.D. in International and Advanced Japanese Studies at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, exploring the nature of citizen activism in the aftermath of the 3.11 disasters. Julia Gerster is an Assistant Professor at the Disaster Culture and Digital Archive Division at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science at Tohoku University, Japan. She received a Ph.D. in Japanese studies at Freie Universität Berlin working on the role of local culture in community recovery after the Great East Japan Earthquake. Manuela G. Hartwig is currently a research associate at the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba, Japan. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Tsukuba in Advanced Social Japanese Studies in 2020 focusing on the role of "science advisers" in Japan’s energy and climate change policymaking network.

Introduction

Natalia Novikova, Julia Gerster, and Manuela Hartwig

Part I: Nuclear Disaster and Recovery Challenges

1. Ten Years of Recovery and Revitalization Policies after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster

Kota Kawasaki

2. Restoring the Rights of Fukushima Nuclear Accident Victims through Collective Lawsuits

Masafumi Yokemoto

3. Voicing the Invisible: Resilience, Adaptation, and Resistance in the Narratives of the Fukushima Plaintiffs

Giulia De Togni

4. Japanese Politics and Nuclear Energy in the Ten Years since Fukushima: A Meta-Political Justice Perspective

Katsuyuki Hidaka

Part II: Dismissed Voices and Agency

5. Disasters and Domestic Violence: Making Structural Injustices toward Women after the Great East Japan Earthquake Visible

Mariko Ogawa

6. Citizenship and Disaster: Experiences of Foreign Women after 3.11

Sunhee Lee

7. The Recognition of "Death by Disaster"

Yuki Sadaike

Part III: Discredited Voices in the Credibility Economy of Disaster

8. Strategic Just-Peacebuilding and Citizen Activities after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Accident

Akiko Ishihara

9. The Right to Be Heard: Analyzing Parents’ Activism in the Kantō Region

Natalia Novikova

10. Growing up in Fukushima Prefecture after the Nuclear Accident: Young People Give Voice to the Stories of Non-Evacuated Communities

Shira Taube Dayan

Part IV: Place-making and Identity

11. Community Empowerment for a Just Recovery of Gathering Spaces: Case Studies from 3.11

Yegane Ghezelloo and Elizabeth Maly

12. Lowering Mountains, Raising Walls: Impacts of Rebuilding in Coastal Miyagi Communities

Alyne Delaney

13. From Being Seen and Heard to Feeling Displaced: The Double-Edged Sword of Tōhoku’s Post-Disaster Tourism

Anna Vainio and Annaclaudia Martini

14. The 3.11 disasters and Challenges of Pursuing Justice: Epilogue

Aya H. Kimura