Paper short abstract:

Why do people opt to continuously live where they are prone to natural disasters instead of living at a distance from the coastline? Especially for those who have just experienced the tsunami of the Great East Japan Earthquake, what motivates them to make the decision to go back to the coast? This paper quests for their reasoning by looking at how the fishing villagers diversify the risk of tsunami by utilising the varied characters of the local sea.

Paper long abstract:

Even after a natural disaster of tremendous scale occurs, some victims attempt to remain or later return "home" while inviting the risk of experiencing further catastrophe. As reported worldwide, the Great Tohoku Earthquake brought about a large-scale tsunami which inflicted devastating damage on the inhabitants of fishing villages along the Pacific coast of the Tohoku area. The Sanriku-region, situated in a seismically active area, has repeatedly incurred serious damage from tsunami. Hence even the tsunami that occurred on March 11, 2011 was actually not an unprecedented event in history. So why do people opt to continuously live where they are prone to natural disasters instead of living at a distance from the coastline? Especially for those who have just experienced the tsunami, what motivates them to make the decision to go back to the coast?

The purpose of this paper is to clarify why people continuously live in places where a specific natural disaster comes with such apparent frequency. In particular, this paper refers to the case of a coastal area called Sanriku where tsunami have recurrently hit at least every 40 years for the last 115 years, including the one caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake. In such a region, this paper quests for the "rationality" of the fishing-villagers tenacity to the coast by looking at their strategy to survive by utilize the varied characters of their local sea.