Paper short abstract:

This case study based on ethnographic fieldwork shows how collective spatial discourses shaping the local experience of post-disaster reconstruction and community building are constructed by residents' machizukuri groups in the town of Yamamoto.

Paper long abstract:

This case study research shows how spatial discourses of peripheries and centers of reconstruction are constructed in post-disaster Yamamoto town by reconstruction machizukuri, "town making" or "community building", groups. These discourses shape the local experience of reconstruction as the residents are collectively framing their altered place-bound communities in response to the reconstruction policies and projects in their physical environment.

The triple disaster of 3.11 shook both the built and social environments of local communities in Tohoku. Citizen participation is regarded as an important factor in increasing the sense of place and community and vice versa, and thus plays a significant part in disaster recovery. The importance of local participation, machizukuri groups as its one form, is also stressed in the aftermath of the 3.11. In addition to the co-operative groups initiated by the administration, the concept of machizukuri features also more independent and critical residential groups. The little studied post-disaster machizukuri offers a window to both locational community building as well as to collective action in response to the spatial changes and conflicts brought by the disaster and reconstruction policies.

The focus of this case study, the town of Yamamoto on the Southern border of Miyagi prefecture, suffered greatly in the tsunami. Yamamoto has focused its rebuilding efforts on three new relocated residential areas of so-called compact cities. However, these new nationally promoted urban style compact city areas differ significantly from the rural pre-tsunami residential areas and the realization of the projects has created controversies in the local community.

Based on the qualitative data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in Yamamoto between October 2014 and May 2015, this research introduces the various forms of post-disaster machizukuri in both the tsunami-struck coastal area and the new compact city areas. The spatial discourses influenced by the socio-political context produced by the groups shape the local experience of reconstruction. The research also discusses the difficult balance of top-down planning and citizen participation and how the experience of disaster and reconstruction can produce new spatial conflicts and perceived inequalities.

Paper short abstract:

This discussion examines two cases of people's displacement in damaged cities after the earthquake in 2011. It shows how current model relocation program is problematic, and it is essential to sustain the sense of locality, community, and habitual dwelling in housing designs through their recovery.

Paper long abstract:

The migration of people due to the change in the industrial structure, wars and colonization, lead the development of hygiene science, the idea of economic function and mass housing technology as the priority in modern architecture. However, the meaning of house as the locus of social ethos and nature was relegated to social studies, and such ideal inconsistencies seriously affect the meaning and design of disaster refugees' housing. This discussion examines two recent cases of people's displacement in Kesennuma and Rikuzen Takada cities in Japan after the earthquake in 2011 in order to inquire about the meaning of a house and sense of dwelling in disaster.

The earthquake and tsunami in 2011 destroyed more than ten thousand houses in Kesennuma and four thousand in Rikuzen Takada. The Ministry of National Land and Infrastructure and the local municipalities decided a model recovery process of housing as follow: relocate those who lost houses to refugee shelters, then to temporary prefabricated houses, and finally prepare two types of housing support; one is developing hinterland area for their reconstruction of houses, and another is constructing mass concrete public housing. Among diverse relocation processes, the case in Kesennuma clearly shows that the ignorance of local community in peoples' relocation to temporary houses and public housing, and the differences between these buildings and local traditional ones affected seriously on their sense of dwelling. Another case in Rikuzen Takada shows opposite; the strong community bond between people from the refugee shelters to the temporary houses, and the temporary houses' similarities with traditional house helped their settling significantly.

By comparing these cases, I will explain how people keep striving to maintain their normal lifestyle and connections to the home land, and how it is essential to sustain the sense of community through their disaster recovery. In the era of displacement due to disasters, we need to consider the idea of house as to be the locus for people's identity and to redesign the process of their replacement and transitional housings in the comprehensive relationship between historical habit, social system and everyday life.

Paper short abstract:

This study regards public discourse of mujō (impermanence) by intellectuals after the triple disaster of March 2011 as ecological Nihonjinron and analyzes how it emphasized the uniqueness of Japanese perceptions of nature and supported the intellectuals' discontent with nuclear energy.

Paper long abstract:

In the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 and resulting Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accidents, many Japanese intellectuals and writers reflected on their nature and national identity by referring to unique Japanese perceptions of nature and aesthetic sensibility. One concept that became especially salient was that of mujō (impermanence), which signifies that "all the phenomena and relationships we experience in our daily lives are bound to disappear with time" (LaFleur, 1983, p. 5). By invoking this concept, they emphasized a duality of nature (e.g., violent and beautiful) and their feelings of akirame (resignation) toward most of the consequences of the earthquake. To support their arguments, they often referred to classical literature such as Kamo no Chōmei's Hōjōki (Account of My Hut) and classical studies by Terada Torahiko and Watsuji Tetsurō regarding the relationship between nature and Japanese identity. At the same time, they expressed their discontent with nuclear energy because they regarded the nuclear crisis as a "human-made" disaster as opposed to a "natural" disaster. Some even argued that the nuclear disaster was a consequence of Westernized civilization's attempt to conquer nature. These discourses shared similar characteristics as a postwar genre of writings known as Nihonjinron or theories of the Japanese which seek to identify unique or exceptional cultural characteristics of contemporary Japanese society and people. Given these characteristics, the author argues that the Japanese intellectuals' and writers' ambivalent reactions/emotions to the natural disaster (earthquake and tsunami) and the human-made disaster in Fukushima revitalized ecological Nihonjinron by appealing to mujō's interconnectedness with Japanese unique senses of nature and aesthetics and its aura of continuity derived from the medieval times. In other words, it was "an idealization of the past, that is, the pre-Western, pre-industrialized, pre-capitalistic Japanese civilization as an antithesis of everything negative in the present" (Moon,1997, p. 228).

References

LaFleur, R. W. (1983). The karma of words. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.

Moon, O. (1997). Marketing nature in rural Japan. In P. J. Asquith & A. Kalland (eds.), Japanese images of nature (pp. 221-235). Richmond: Curzon Press.