Paper short abstract:

Even if practically-meaningless in the face of trauma, this paper reflects on the collective psychological efficacy, however tenuous, of patterned, ritualized activity: an outstretched hand reaching towards safety and the stability: that is, a pretence of recovery.

Paper long abstract:

This paper considers the collective experience of trauma among members of a corporation, and their families, whose factory and office buildings, homes and communities were ripped apart in the tsunami following shortly after the 11 March 2011 'Great East Japan earthquake' 東日本大震災, referred to as '3.11'. In the ethnographer's co-experience of outrageous helplessness with Japanese colleagues in the immediate crisis, it was notable that even if, practically-speaking, mostly irrelevant, they took coordinated action where possible, placing an impressive emphasis on their work for the corporation itself as an emotional life raft. In the months and years to follow, 'recovery' was formally emphasized at this corporation, as elsewhere in this region of Japan. Machinery was repaired or replaced and assembly lines eventually re-opened, 'restart' ceremonies were held, with ribbons cut in comparatively sober, and sombre, celebration. The destruction of the earthquake and tsunami formally acknowledged, a page ostensibly turned, prospect of hope for a new beginning memorialized.

This paper argues, however, that whatever the physical proximity to disaster, it is timeless for those who share it. We can never again see each other but through the reminder of that deep distortion of normalcy. Rather, perhaps 3.11's memorialization is most significantly represented for these informants in its encounter with the re-emergence of day-to-day practice: ritualized formations of exhaustion, familiar in their regular patterns of work itself.