Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes exhibits and mission statements of 18 governmental disaster memorial museums dedicated to passing on lessons from the 2011 disasters. It shows how the strong focus on BOSAI narratives and specific localities leads to excluding the nuclear disaster in most of these facilities.

Paper long abstract:

With the proliferation of several dozen new exhibits and museums dedicated to this specific disaster, the 3.11 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster can be considered a turning point in the preservation of disaster memory in Japan. Although there is limited research on disaster memorial museums, they play a significant role in shaping the cultural memory of 3.11, as they are regarded as reliable, objective institutions of memory. Through analysis of 18 government-established 3.11 museums, this research explores the following questions: How do public disaster memorial museums frame their representations of 3.11, and what official narrative is created within the cultural memory of the triple disaster in Japan? Drawing from an analysis of the museums’ mission statements and exhibitions, and interviews with curators and museum staff, we argue that most disaster memorial museums support narratives of overcoming hardships to contribute to a better future, showing continuity with narratives typical of other memorial museums such as WWII, or pre-3.11 disaster museums. In contrast to the commemoration of war and its influence on cultural memory, disaster museums have received relatively little scholarly attention. Yet, these forward-looking messages, combined with the tendencies of museums to focus on local disaster experiences and emphasize disaster risk reduction with an artificial separation between man-made disasters vs. natural hazards, contributes to the othering of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in cultural memory as an outlier in Japan’s long history of disasters. We argue that without full representation of the compound disaster, understanding of 3.11 and the effective transmission of the intended lessons is severely limited.