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Paper short abstract

Ethnographic findings show persistent gendered disaster biases in Japan’s recent earthquakes. This paper examines how women navigate vulnerabilities through kokoro no kea and spiritual care as culturally grounded, non-pathologizing support when formal services fall short.

Paper long abstract

Disasters generate long-term psychosocial impacts that often remain invisible, particularly among populations facing intersecting vulnerabilities. In Japan, despite three decades of gender mainstreaming in disaster policy, responses to the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes and the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake reveal persistent gender biases. In Kumamoto, a disaster culture focused primarily on hydrogeological hazards left communities underprepared for seismic events, compounding women’s risks within a deeply conservative gender environment. In the Noto peninsula—a region with persistent demographic decline and entrenched traditional norms—more women evacuated than men, and conditions in evacuation shelters were especially harsh. Age-related needs, gendered expectations, and rigid community hierarchies intensified women’s emotional and practical burdens during displacement and throughout long-term recovery. Drawing on ethnographic research (2016–2020 and 2024), this paper examines how women navigate these intersecting vulnerabilities through culturally rooted, non-pathologizing forms of support, particularly kokoro no kea (emotional care) and spiritual care offered by religious organizations, and rinshō shūkyōshi (clinical religious specialists). Findings show that participants regarded kokoro no kea and related community-based practices as more attuned to their lived realities than formal psychological and mental health services, which are undermined by social stigma and often medicalize emotional distress. By situating kokoro no kea within Japan’s gendered disaster landscape, the paper argues that spiritual and emotional care functions both as a vital coping mechanism and as a subtle form of resistance, enabling women to redefine wellbeing amid structural vulnerability.