Rebuilding Fukushima Routledge Studies in Hazards, Disaster Risk and Climate Change Series

Five years after the one of the worst nuclear accidents in history, Fukushima now only occasionally headlines national and international media. However, the disaster is far from over, as evidenced by a hundred thousand people from Fukushima still in the state of evacuation, rising levels of radiation in streams and rivers, and failing attempts to control the leakage of radioactive materials at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Despite these dismal conditions, efforts to recover and rebuild livelihoods in the afflicted regions of Fukushima did start immediately after the outset of the accident.

Rebuilding Fukushima gives an account of how citizens, local governments, and businesses responded to and coped with the crisis of Fukushima. It addresses principles to guide reconstruction and international policy environments in which the current disaster is situated. It explores how reconstruction is articulated and experienced at different spatial scales, ranging from individuals to communities and municipalities, and details recovery efforts, achievements, and challenges in the realms of public transportation, agriculture and food production, manufacturing industries, retail sectors, and renewable-energy industries. This book also critically investigates the nature of the current reconstruction policy schemes, and seeks to articulate what may be required in order to achieve more sustainable and equitable (re)development in afflicted regions and other nuclear host regions.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork and local surveys, this volume is one of the first books in English that captures the knowledge and insights of native Japanese social scientists who dealt with the complexities of nuclear disaster on a day-to-day basis. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of disaster-management studies and nuclear policy.

List of figures

List of tables

List of contributors

Preface and acknowledgments

Map of Fukushima Prefecture

Introduction

Mitsuo Yamakawa and Daisaku Yamamoto

1 Five principles for the reconstruction of the nuclear disaster-afflicted areas

Mitsuo Yamakawa and Katsumi Nakai

2 International efforts to support disaster risk reduction

Satoru Mimura

3 Challenges of just rebuilding: case studies of Iitate Village and Tomioka Town, Fukushima Prefecture

Akihiko Sato

4 Why do local residents continue to use potentially contaminated stream water after the nuclear accident? A case study of Kawauchi Village, Fukushima

Takehito Noda

5 Securing mobility in the nuclear disaster-afflicted region: a case study of Minami-Soma

Itsuki Yoshida

6 Toward effective radioactivity countermeasures for agricultural products

Hideki Ishii

7 Resilience of local food systems to the Fukushima nuclear disaster: a case study of the Fukushima Soybean Project

Takashi Norito

8 Impacts of the disaster and future tasks for the recovery of small and medium-sized manufacturing firms in Fukushima

Toshio Hatsuzawa

9 Bringing businesses back, bringing residents back: efforts and challenges to restore commerce in formerly evacuated areas

Akira Takagi and Masayuki Seto

10 Renewable-energy policies and economic revitalization in Fukushima: issues and prospects

Yoshio Ohira

11 Beyond developmental reconstruction in post-Fukushima Japan

Daisaku Yamamoto and Mitsuo Yamakawa

Index

Mitsuo Yamakawa is Professor of Economic Geography at Teikyo University and Extraordinary Professor of the Fukushima Future Center for Regional Revitalization (FURE) at Fukushima University.

Daisaku Yamamoto is Associate Professor of Geography and Asian Studies at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York. His recent work focuses on community resilience, regional inequality, and uneven development.