Paper short abstract:

What does disaster tell us about Japanese democracy? By investigating several recent disasters through the lens of the emotions that they produce, this paper explores the political side of disaster (mis)management and provides some new insights on contemporary Japanese politics.

Paper long abstract:

In the past three decades, Japan has been struck by numerous large-scale disasters from the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake to the 2019 typhoon season and the still ongoing Fukushima nuclear crisis, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and trillion yen of damage. Particularly prone to natural hazards, the nation has established an extensive institutional and organizational framework for disaster management, regularly revised and adapted to face new risks. Largely relying on highly specialized knowledge and technocratic approach, the field appears dominated by experts and bureaucrats, leaving little room for citizen participation or moral opinion.

Meanwhile, every disaster produces powerful and conflictual affects and emotions, ranging from sadness, anger, anxiety and fear to empathy and compassion. The emotional consequences of a disaster continue to impact a society years and even decades after the disaster occurred. The perception of how well the events were managed depends highly on the emotional responses among the victims and their families, the general public and the media, and even the politicians and government officials involved. These emotional reactions play a major role not only in shaping historical judgment but also in causing policy revision and political change. In the aftermath of a disaster, policy and moral entrepreneurs, including the government and the imperial family itself, are active in mobilizing emotions in order to raise awareness on specific topics—from the denunciation of authorities' inaction to calls for national unity—and to place them on the public agenda. In such case, emotional mobilization serves as a way to address the limitations of governmental action or to compensate its failure. Against the illusion of depoliticized management, these intense conflicts of emotions reaffirm the political nature of disaster in Japan.

Drawing upon extensive empirical research of several recent disasters, this paper investigates what disasters reveal about contemporary Japanese politics. It will demonstrate the crucial importance of emotions in the politics of disaster management and how taking more seriously the various roles played by these emotions in the political and policy process casts a new light on Japanese democracy.