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The Japanese government plans to release ALPS treated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant starting in the summer of 2023. This has appeared to be a controversial topic in Japan and amongst its neighbors in the regions. This paper focuses on the attitudes of Japanese people towards the government policy, placing it within the context of wider issues.

An online survey of 2,000 participants completed an online survey comprising of Likert type and multi-choice type questions. The results were analyzed using logit regression analysis.

We found that issues other than the ALPS discharge were seen as equally important, but that there was concern about the policy, the impact the discharge would have, and about produce from the area. We also found that the farther away the participants lived, the less concern they showed. Consultations with both local communities and neighboring countries were seen as important by many participants.

This research places the issue of ALPS treated water into a wider context of other global issues and examines the role distance from Fukushima plays in the public’s engagement with the issue. It serves to highlight the mixed results of government efforts to win support for its ALPS discharge policy.

This study aims to develop an extended social attachment model for expatriates, integrating a multiple stakeholder perspective, to understand evacuation decisions during disasters.

Through interviews with 12 Tokyo-based expatriates who experienced the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters, this study collects the lived experiences of a diverse set of expatriates. This data is analyzed abductively to map relevant evacuation factors and to propose a reaction typology.

While the 2011 Tohoku disasters caused regional destruction and fears of nuclear fallout, Tokyo remained largely unscathed. Still, many expatriates based in Tokyo chose to leave the country. Evacuation decisions were shaped by an interplay of threat assessment, location of attachment figures and cross-cultural adjustment. The study also discusses the influence of expatriate types.

Disaster planning is often overlooked or designed primarily with host country nationals in mind. Expatriates often lack the disaster experience and readiness of host country nationals in disaster-prone regions in Asia and beyond, and thus might need special attention when disaster strikes. This study provides advice for how to do so.

By unpacking the under-researched and complex phenomenon of expatriate reactions to disasters, this study contributes to the fields of international human resource and disaster management. Specifically, seven proposition on casual links leading to expatriate evacuation are suggested, paving the way for future research.

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.

Environmental disasters are preventable, but this remains a complicated and elusive prospect. This article discusses factors that combine to limit and undermine environmental disaster prevention efforts and explores directions for improved theory and practice.

The challenge of integrating root cause analysis of environmental disasters with interventions and preventive measures at later stages of disaster incubation is outlined. The prospect of learning and transferring lessons from past environmental disasters is discussed. Eighteen environmental disaster cases are summarized and analyzed.

A range of factors, including complexity, lack of lesson transfer, perceived lack of incentives and inaction, limits advances in environmental disaster prevention. Theoretical challenges involve better bridging of root cause and incubation analyses, enhanced understanding of the nature and discipline of foresight and greater documentation of alternative approaches to prevention, including post–normal techniques. Although a transformative breakthrough in environmental disaster prevention is unlikely, substantial progress could be made through better lesson transfer and application of alternative approaches.

This article draws attention to problems and opportunities surrounding the challenge of environmental disaster prevention and proposes directions for improved theory and practice.

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.