Paper short abstract:

On-going research on Japan's 2011 'Triple Disaster' suggests that anthropologists should analytically story the long-term, radical effects on interlocutors and their communities of disaster across time which, with its always in-coming challenges, might otherwise obscure or deny their experiences.

Paper long abstract:

Japan’s ‘Triple Disaster’ lives in its survivors in Tohoku, northeast Japan, complicating the region’s status in Japanese consciousness as a backwater, rich in folklore and ‘tradition’, a distant land of volcanoes, poor soil, harsh winters; of steeply-valleyed coastal communities where 122,312 people died on 11 March 2011. I argue for ethnographic attention to long-term effects, on-going for those radically affected by disaster – including 228,863 displaced – that accounts for the complications of history itself – political exigencies, Olympic Games, new pandemics – that might otherwise serve to obscure or deny the personal experiences of those grossly affected by an extreme event.

My interlocutors experienced two prongs of the ‘triple disaster’ – earthquake and the resultant tsunami – but indirectly the demise of Fukushima’s nuclear plant, 60 miles to the south. Without denying that Fukushima’s on-going meltdown requires continuous study, notably Japan’s March 2011 is increasingly construed as the ‘Fukushima disaster’. Thus silenced in general Japanese discourse, for those elsewhere in Tohoku, who only faced the watery death of loved ones, the destruction of homes, whole communities and livelihoods, the risks of further emotional displacement are real, with the quality of personal and communal memories denied, including the possible loss of tangible support. The experience and even, perhaps, local acceptance of that process would align, furthermore, with a trope associated with Tohoku as always-already lost in Japanese national consciousness.

Instead, anthropologists should work to story the radical effects of disaster including its articulation across time with other, always-in-coming challenges.