Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines the different notions and practices of circulation, cycles, and circularity that emerged in a Japanese village following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. I discuss how co-designing with disrupted ecologies fosters cohabitability in a post-disaster world.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper examines the different notions and practices of circulation, cycles, and circularity that emerged in a Japanese village named Iitate following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011. Iitate was a forced evacuation zone that was reopened in 2017. Most of the village is covered by forests that fell outside the decontamination plan of the Japanese state. The state aspires to achieve human control of the environmental consequences and effects of the nuclear fallout by encircling sites of exclusion and by managing the displacement of exposed living beings and non-living things in the radioactive landscape. During my fieldwork in Iitate from 2017-2022, I observed some villagers experimenting with technologies like solar farms to foster new ecological cycles with cattle-raising and rice farming to unwrite the state narrative and cultural belief of disasters critically. These villagers include returning villagers, mostly older people with split families, and younger generations who moved in to pursue diverse lives and dreams. They put themselves into transition from the narrative of separation (from home, for example) to that of a relational being despite the lingering radiation. This paper discusses how they circulate new ideas of co-designing with the disrupted ecologies, and what these new ecological cycles mean in fostering cohabitability in a post-disaster world. My contribution will be a paper-based presentation.