In July 2011, three months after the Tohoku tsunami and subsequent nuclear reactor destabilization, we published the first Hot Spot series on the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s website, “3.11 Politics in Disaster Japan: Fear and Anger, Possibility and Hope.” Ten years later, we asked the original contributors to reflect on the past decade, in terms of fear and anger, possibility and hope post-3.11.
Posts in This Series
3.11 Politics in Disaster Japan, Ten Years Later: Introduction
On March 11, 2011, the largest recorded earthquake in Japan’s history rocked the country. Within minutes, a tsunami that reached thirty meters in places was hea... More
Reterritorialization of the Nuclear Village
The dispersal of radiation did not produce the sort of death or illness that many feared, although the long-term effects of radiation are still largely unknown.... More
Fukushima: Despite Resiliency, Emancipation Denied
Pity the arbiters of the Fukushima Grand Narrative. As the crisis phase of the nuclear disaster receded to the point where survivors of the 2011 disasters could... More
Too Many Crises to Remember
Since 2011, the media coverage of the 3.11 disaster has ebbed and become an annual media ritual. Most people seem to be busy in their own business of everyday l... More
Empire of Bones
I stayed up late one night a couple months ago, in March 2021, watching the live broadcasts commemorating the tenth anniversary of the catastrophe in Tohoku. Wh... More
Meaningful Play
Science fiction, rather than science, seems to be dictating reality in the decade after 3.11. The post-apocalyptic eighties manga AKIRA predicted the Olympics w... More
Affective Technology in Times of Crisis
Ten years ago, when an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northern Japan, one technological object in pa... More
History’s Repetition
When the unwelcome collaboration of nature and history furiously swept over and uprooted everything in its way in Fukushima on 3.11, the then mayor of Tokyo exp... More
Mapping Diffuse Anxiety
Mapping continues to reconfirm the criticality of space in the cruel happenstances of human life evidenced by the Triple Disaster that struck Tohoku Japan in 20... More
From Bravado to Radical Interdependence
Despite ten years having passed since the Fukushima nuclear accident, we still can’t enter the nuclear plants and their surrounding area due to excessively high... More
Time and Life in Fukushima
Summer 2015, four years after the disaster, I headed to Fukushima with a friend to see what we could of the region. Having contracted with someone offering to g... More
Can You Hear the People Sing?
Nine years ago, I joined the choir praising a series of mass gatherings claiming to speak in the name of the people. A weekly antinuclear rally outside the Japa... More
Disaster Continues
A decade has passed since the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident. While the disaster continues with radio-contamination permeating beyond the border of Japa... More