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The earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, not only caused extensive direct damage to the population but also triggered a nuclear power plant accident that brought the terror and reality of radiation. The restoration of communities in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures presents enormous problems. People from the radiation-contaminated areas have faced numerous ordeals since resettlement after the accident. Through personal interviews with victims, this chapter investigates what happened in the regional societies and how community consciousness changed as a result of the combined natural and manmade catastrophes. The study focuses on the restoration of community from social bonds through mutual help networks as a spontaneous social order. As the result of interviewing, some propositions were developed concerning the transformation of mutual help networks. The stronger the outside assistance from volunteers whom the victims came to trust and rely on, the weaker inside communal help becomes. Inventorying and clarifying the particular problems of conflict in stricken communities such as the loss of confidence in neighbors, the possibilities of rebuilding communities are explored, especially indicating how to cope with the social demise of communities that local people had formed and occupied all their lives.

The Tohoku Region in northern Japan was devastated by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Although much of the physical infrastructure has since been restored, annual tourism numbers have yet to restore to pre-disaster levels. In some areas, tourism recovery remains stagnant. The objective of this research is to examine how local decision-­makers utilize media strategies to deal with image-related crises and reverse negative images to combat stereotypes and deliver successful campaign messages. The study has found that each of the prefectures affected by the disasters has since utilized different campaign strategies with some, such as Fukushima, focusing on the future, while others, such as Aomori, utilized a mixture disassociating itself from the troubled area and associating itself with its more prestigious neighbor. Much of these negative images stem from persisting images of region-wide safety fears over natural hazards and radiation concerns. This study suggests that further research needs to be done to identify the different risk perceptions of foreign tourists by country, as some groups such as Koreans are more risk averse leading to a sharp decline in visits, while others such as Taiwanese who are accustomed to natural hazards are leading in visitor numbers and tourism recovery.

Japan’s civic environmentalism combines a tradition of local protest and activism with a national environmental movement that is limited in size and policy influence. A strong legislative and administrative response to the country’s severe pollution crisis of the 1960s and 1970s helped tamp down that era’s wave of protests and keep the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in power. While the state has generally supported local organizations engaged in environmental improvement activities, it has erected barriers that limit the scope of non-governmental organization (NGO) activities and inhibit the development of an influential national environmental movement. The 1990s reforms, inspired in part by the citizen response to the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, made it easier for NGOs to attain legal status and raise funds. Yet Japan’s civic environmentalism – by most measures – still lags well behind that of peer industrialized countries. The 2011 tsunami and nuclear crisis brought another opportunity for major reforms to the nation’s civic environmental culture – but the evidence to date indicates that the much anticipated transformation is turning out to be of a lesser magnitude than many had initially expected.

Drawing on a case study in Hitachi City, Ibaraki prefecture, this chapter aims to analyze the relationship between community support and the behavior of residents after the Tohoku Pacific Earthquake in the regions affected by the disaster. The chapter will examine residents’ behavior and the community’s roles by way of the following process: (1) We will review Japan’s natural disaster prevention regimes; (2) we will examine the result of a field survey conducted in Hitachi City detailing the city’s natural disaster prevention procedures and the operation of some neighborhood evacuation sites; (3) the behavior of residents following the earthquake is analyzed. In this part, questionnaires were sent to 2000 households, of which 492 (24.6%) were collected and used for this analysis. The earthquake and tsunami destroyed lifelines such as water supply for several days in the city. According to the city, a total of 65 buildings were judged to be in dangerous condition, 251 as requiring care, and 478 were only partially damaged. The most serious damage was found mainly in the city’s coastal areas, where a total of 85 houses were entirely or partly damaged, and 483 houses were flooded above the floorboards by the tsunami. On March 11, a total of 69 evacuation sites opened, and 13,607 residents rushed into them. After the disaster, residents initially tried to go back to their homes. Depending on the damage done, they either stayed there or moved to a relative’s or friend’s house, or to a neighborhood evacuation site. Due to the failure of the lifelines, transportation systems, and the damage caused by the disaster, most residents had to stay within an area more limited than usual, around which they could walk or ride by bicycle. Residents had only the human and physical resources of their neighborhoods. Therefore, the characteristics of their local communities affected how residents behaved during and after the earthquake.

In this research, we analyze the impact of catastrophe events on risk-neutral densities which can be implied from European option markets. As catastrophe events we consider the destruction of the nuclear power plant at Fukushima and the downgrading of U.S. sovereign debt in 2011. In an event study, we analyze the impact on European blue chip index options traded at EUREX. We find that after a short adaption period, probability mass of especially risk-neutral density functions derived from long-term options is shifted toward the right side. Thus, very good states of the economy become more expensive indicating higher prices for deep out-of-the-money options. This signifies that there has been speculation on a recovery of the German stock market after the shocks.

Though some disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) abstractions and core concepts may appear transparently obvious to some readers, others might not easily grasp the complexities embedded in them. This chapter focusses on the main arguments connected to DRRM. It unravels some of the complexities that abound in the framing of key disaster risk reduction concepts in literature. This chapter is divided into three parts. The first part focusses on understanding the dynamics of disasters. This part revisits definitions of disasters in literature, how they have been conceptualised in academia and what makes them different from other related concepts such as hazards, crisis, vulnerabilities and emergencies. Furthermore, considering that some impacts of disasters are more obvious than others, it examines some of the less conspicuous relationships between disasters and other phenomena. The second part examines the concept of DRRM in existing literature, highlighting the importance of resilience in DRRM and revisiting key methodological approaches in building resilience among communities. The third part places the concept of DRRM within the African context. It demonstrates the delicate aspects embedded in successful DRRM in Africa amid institutional development and policy issues. This part concludes with the identification of key knowledge gaps in DRRM in Africa. These knowledge gaps identified in the wider literature are used to justify why the chapters in this book and the context covered (sub-Saharan Africa) are of utmost importance in DRRM.