Fukushima and Furusato

―Rural community after nuclear disaster―

July 25, 2013 6:30 PM (finished)


Tom Gill

(Professor of Social Anthropology, Meiji Gakuin University)

Date/Time July 25, 2013 6:30 PM
Location Room 549 5th floor, Akamon Sogo Kenkyuto Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo  [map]
Abstract Everyone in Japan is supposed to love their home-town or ‘furusato’, celebrated in hundreds of sentimental songs as an idyllic rural community with a relaxed pace of life. There is an irony there, of course, since some most of Japan’s population has long since abandoned rural life. But many of the victims of the 3.11 disasters were among the minority of Japanese people who still live in small rural communities, with a life-style based on the three-generation family living under a single roof. The 3.11 disaster has forced rural communities in Fukushima to confront the question of what ‘home’ really means. Is it defined by a locality, or by the people who live there? And if you have to abandon one or the other, which do you choose? The land and the houses are still there; the radiation levels are slowly coming down. As the government slowly lifts evacuation orders on the contaminated towns and villages, the questions of who will return, and when, are becoming more pressing. Many thorny issues are involved: whether one trusts government assurances of safety; whether one still considers the place home after years living elsewhere; whether children now used to the convenience of city life will be happy to return to a remote rural dwelling; whether living in the ancestral furusato will expose one’s family to discrimination; and whether one can afford to live elsewhere, once government compensation payments cease. In this presentation I will take a close look at how these issues are playing out for people living in one of these rural communities – the hamlet of Nagadoro, in Iitate village. The hamlet is deserted and barricaded, its population scattered. Will the community survive, and if so, how and where?
Bio Tom Gill is a professor of social anthropology in the Faculty of International Studies at the Yokohama campus of Meiji Gakuin University. After many years researching casual labour, urban poverty and homelessness, his interest in marginal people has led him to fieldwork in the Fukushima nuclear disaster zone for the last two years. He is co-editor with David Slater and Brigitte Steger of Higashi Nihon Dai-Shinsai no Jinruigaku (Anthropology of the Great Eastern Japan Disaster; 2013). An English-language edition, Japan Copes with Calamity, is forthcoming from Peter Lang. http://www.meijigakuin.ac.jp/~gill/