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Myth is a story of archetypical personas who behave in ways and with motives that we recognize in ourselves. We use myth as a way of reminding ourselves of the relationship between motives, actions, and consequences. Myths can serve either as inspirational or cautionary tales, and sometimes as both. But “myth” can also mean a fabricated story intended to create a false impression, and to achieve storytellers’ ends when they have decided the truth will not suffice. We apply the myth of Cassandra to the millennium-long recorded history of giant tsunamis in Japan. After each of these catastrophes, survivors sought to warn future generations of their recurrences. But, each time, their progeny eventually lost the memory of these lessons, and lost their lives when the next monster wave overwhelmed them. Only when they kept the lessons as living knowledge in everyday life, could they manage to escape from monster tsunamis. In this chapter, we use the myth of Cassandra in conjunction with the myth of Prometheus, the bringer of fire to humankind, as a metaphor for Japan’s growing reliance on nuclear power. Government and utility companies built powerful but inherently dangerous cauldrons in the nation’s disaster-prone landscapes, assuring the public they could control the fire’s fury and defend it against nature’s. As images of atomic bomb victims were still vivid and widely shared in Japan, they had to overcome the public fear of radioactivity by fabricating a “myth of safety.” The nuclear disaster made the public distrust the government and utility companies, which lingers in the process of reconstruction from the disaster. Myths can either reveal hidden truths or mask hidden lies. The Japanese people must now learn to distinguish one from the other.

Schools play an important role in Japan by becoming evacuation centers after disasters. Depending on the nature of disaster, the school can be occupied for several days to several months. Therefore, schools play a crucial role in disaster risk reduction and can contribute to very strong bonding with the local communities. This chapter describes the experiences of six cities with the roles of schools during disasters. Kamaishi, Kesennuma, and Natori, three cities affected by the tsunami, have shown the important role that schools played in the time of disaster. Although some schools were destroyed in these three cities, people spent significant time in other schools as evacuees. Pre-disaster preparedness of schools and communities helped a lot in this regard. Taking the experiences from the East Japan disaster, Saijo, Owase, and Oobu cities in West Japan demonstrated their preparedness for future disaster. The chapter also shows that school-centered disaster preparedness before the disaster leads to an effective role during the disaster and also facilitates post-disaster recovery with schools as the center.

This study aims to compare the humanitarian supply chains and logistics of two countries in earthquake preparedness by modifying and using a previously established preparedness evaluation framework.

A European flood emergency management system (FEMS) is a seven-dimensional framework to assess a country’s preparedness for flood emergencies. The FEMS framework was modified to apply to earthquakes. Leveraging a multiple explanatory case study approach with data analysis, the authors reconstructed the events of the earthquakes in Pakistan (2005) and Japan (2011) with an applied grading (1–5). Findings were evaluated within the adopted FEMS framework. From a practitioner’s perspective, the framework is applicable and can accelerate support in the field.

Pakistan lacked emergency plans before the 2005 earthquake. In contrast, Japan possessed emergency plans before the disaster, helping minimise casualties. Overall, Japan demonstrated considerably better emergency management effectiveness. However, both countries significantly lacked the distribution of responsibilities among actors.

Practical factors in the humanitarian supply chain are well understood. However, synthesising individual factors into a comprehensive framework is difficult, which the study solves by applying and adopting the FEMS framework to earthquakes. The developed framework allows practitioners a structured baseline for prioritising measures in the field. Furthermore, this study exemplifies the usefulness of cross-hazard research within emergency management and preparedness in a real-world scenario.

This paper aims to consider the current situation of relocation in Japan after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) in the context of past examples and post-disaster housing relocation projects in other countries.

Information about international cases of post-disaster housing relocation was gathered though desk and literature review, supplemented by field visits to the sites for direct observation and interviews with people involved in the relocation projects.

To be successful, residential relocation must consider livelihood, especially in regards to location. Involvement of the residents in the planning and decision making process creates housing relocation projects that better meet residents’ needs. Japan faces some unique challenges, yet shares commonalities with other countries, for example, in tsunami-stricken fishing areas. Housing relocation in Tohoku must strive to be accountable to the needs of the residents and the specific contexts of their communities.

There is still a limited amount of literature in English that considers the issues of relocation in recovery after the GEJE in an international context, especially comprehensive comparisons with multiple countries. Although this paper does not deal with each international case in great detail, the comparison provides a good overview of the key issues for residents in post-disaster relocation, and suggests how lessons from international cases could be applied to the challenges that Japan currently faces in relocation planning in the Tohoku region.

Using the forensic investigation (FORIN) approach, the purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that exacerbated the loss of human life in one of the most devastated local municipalities on the coast by 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (GEJET) disaster.

This paper begins by reviewing the extent of damage to the local municipalities along the Sanriku ria coast, which has a long history of tsunami disasters. Second, the paper compares previous major tsunami events by using a human vulnerability index, and applies this index to detect the city of Rikuzentakata. Third, the paper identifies the root causes of the GEJET disaster in the city. Interview records with disaster victims were used to elucidate the main factors that exacerbated the number of deaths.

The study indicates that the FORIN approach can be effectively applied to identify the target city for this case study and to point to those factors the most exacerbated human sufferings, and also provides many lessons based on research findings and methodologies to support building resilient societies in the future.

This paper indicates FORIN approach as an effective research template by investigating the GEJET disaster.

The paper aims to study the effects of the tsunami that affected Banda Aceh in 2004.

During a survey by Japanese researchers in Banda Aceh and surrounding areas in Indonesia after the great Sumatra earthquake, questionnaires were distributed to the people affected by the earthquake and tsunami. The purpose of the questionnaires was to collect information of what happened and what were expected by the affected people to be safe against future earthquake and tsunami. The questionnaires consisted of questions asking their experience during and after the earthquake and tsunami.

One important result of the questionnaires shows that even if people had started running away just after the big earthquake, the percentage of expected survivors would have been less than 100 percent.

The paper shows that education, socialization (software) and escape structures, warning system, wave resisting structures (hardware) are important factors for people to be safer against future earthquake and tsunami attacks.

This paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of early warning and community cooperation for evacuation preparedness from mega-risk type coastal hazard in childcare centers, focusing in the evacuation of childcare centers from tsunami at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011.

As the research method, surveys were conducted in public childcare centers affected by tsunami in Kesennuma city in Miyagi Prefecture and Kamaishi city in Iwate Prefecture.

As the main findings, facilities, where teachers and children started evacuation immediately after the earthquake, could have more conditions to get cooperation from the local community to evacuate children in wide-scale urban environment. Children 3-5 years old tended to be instructed to walk two abreast under the lead of teachers, and children 0-2 years old tended to be carried by the piggyback ride and multi-passenger baby strollers. The destination of evacuation needed to be changed several times because of the risks for higher tsunami and fire outbreaks.

As future issues, it is necessary to analyze the walking capability of children and the transportation capability of multi-passenger baby strollers by teachers, to address strategies to quantify the necessary community cooperation based on the severity of early warning.

Most of the past studies regarding disaster preparedness of nursery children are limited within the facility in case of fire. This work has importance as it focused on the emergency responses that require urban-scale evacuation in ascending route that differ from that which are required in the case of fire.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the transportation organizational service provision and travel behavioral responses after the March 2011 disaster in North East Japan. This research aims to identify the areas for capacity building in transportation to support resilient built environments.

A case study approach was taken to examine the transportation organizational service provision in one of the most devastated communities after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Data on post-disaster transportation arrangements were collected from local newspapers, desk reviews of reports by transportation operators and the local council, semi-structured interviews with local council and community groups, and a residents’ questionnaire surveying travel behavior. Organizational responses were analyzed by: the pre-disaster phase, the emergency phase, the rebuilding (temporary settlement) phase and the recovery (permanent settlement) phase.

Transportation demand changes dramatically in the emergency phase. In the re-building phase, an efficient and effective provision of a transportation service is required. The recovery and pre-disaster phases are critical as these are the time to build capacity for resilience. Practical application of the land use and transportation planning process is recommended in forming a transportation master plan.

This research is the first attempt to analyze the transportation organizational responses after a disaster in four discrete temporal dimensions. The knowledge provided in the paper is derived from the examination of the transportation responses in a city after a major disaster. The findings are more generally applicable to any built environments that are aiming for resilience.

Citizen participation has attracted attention in the context of decentralization. In a disaster reconstruction process, a business plan for reconstruction can be modified in line with diversified situations of disaster-affected areas by citizen participation. In Japan, the central government makes a decision about the authority in charge of an overall disaster reconstruction and the budget planning, whereas local governments are in charge of creating and implementing a business plan for reconstruction of each local municipality. Therefore, local governments play an important role in organizing citizen participation to realize the reconstruction that fits reality. It has yet to be shown as decentralization reform and citizen participation system in Japan produce the socio-spatial inequality after the Great East Japan Earthquake. However, it remains to be elucidated how local government and community have to operate the institution about citizen participation during the disaster reconstruction process. I have been doing fieldwork on three tsunami-affected sites in Miyagi Prefecture over past 4 years: Onagawa Town, Higashimatsushima City, and Natori City. I have investigated the social processes of making and implementing a reconstruction plan, and citizen participation. The findings from my fieldwork are as follows: First, citizen participation is based on organizing residents at the community level. Second, traditional community organization (such as neighborhood organization abd industrial associations) contribute to organize residents especially in the emergency phase. Third, as the disaster phase moves, local government and community organization need to change the previous participation frame to ensure residents representation and policy legitimacy.