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Attempting to explore the role of direct experience in influencing disaster consciousness and public opinion, the purpose of this paper is to carry out comparative analyses of Japanese people’s knowledge, risk perception, and policy preference about large-scale earthquake disaster before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake. More importantly, aiming to provide implications regarding the application of past experience, the predictive power of direct experience on disaster consciousness is also examined.

This study analyzed parts of the data collected from two nationwide public opinion surveys among Japanese conducted by the Japanese Government. Analyses of variance were performed to examine changes in disaster consciousness. A path model was developed to examine the predicted effects of direct experience. χ2 tests were performed to examine changes in strategy preference.

This study found significant changes in Japanese people’s knowledge of natural hazards and perception of mega disaster risk. Tests of the path model suggested significant positive effect of societal level impact on disaster consciousness and strong predictive power of knowledge on risk perception. Significant changes in strategy preference were also found.

Results supported the predictive power of direct experience, highlighting the significance of recalling past experience as well as creating indirect experience to raise public consciousness and motivate appropriate actions.

This is one of the few studies that investigate changes in public opinion among Japanese before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to review research on gender and disasters in Japan, from the Kobe Earthquake to the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE). Gender perspectives were not adequately considered immediately after these disasters. Rather, disasters reinforced the gender roles prevalent in Japanese society. The paper seeks ways to position gender perspectives into mainstream thought on disaster management in Japan.

A literature review was conducted of secondary Japanese sources including peer-reviewed and non-academic journals published by governmental and non-governmental organisations after the Kobe, Niigata Chuetsu, and GEJEs. Popularly searched keywords were the Japanese for “gender” or “women”, and “disasters”.

A review of the published literature indicated that gender-related issues experienced during the Kobe Earthquake in 1995 and the Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake in 2004 were repeated following the GEJE in 2011. Japan has experienced numerous disasters; thus, the importance of gender perspectives has been gradually recognised and has received increased attention after the GEJE. This paper emphasises that these should be embedded at policy level and within disaster management structures to create disaster resilient communities.

To date, not much research in Japan, and none published in English, has reviewed gender- and disaster-related issues.

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.

After the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), the need for disaster case management (DCM) was highlighted through the efforts of the Sendai Bar Association, which investigated the situation of survivors. This paper provides an overview of DCM in Japan since the GEJE, including key findings from investigations and legal consultations conducted by the Sendai Bar Association and the first author, who took part in the surveys with survivors in Ishinomaki City, clarifying the large number of homebound survivors and their needs.

In recent years there has been growing attention to the importance of DCM for supporting life and housing recovery of disaster survivors. Along with the expansion of DCM activities over several decades in Japan, the need for DCM was increasingly recognized after the 2011 GEJE and tsunami, especially for home-based survivors left out of government-provided disaster recovery support programs. As one-on-one advice to support individual recovery needs, the focus of DCM in Japan is legal advice to help survivors effectively navigate support policies.

Since the GEJE, there has been growing support for DCM in Japan, including from practitioners, scholars, and regional and national governments. However, although DCM can be an effective way to support housing recovery, even 12 years after the GEJE, there are still survivors in need of additional support.

Drawing on a detailed case study and action research of the first author, this paper contributes to the still limited international literature on DCM in Japan.

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.

The purpose of this study is to present the possibilities of co-creation-type reconstruction methods by focusing on examples of reconstruction in communities affected by the 2011 disaster in Japan. This is because the reconstruction of a community is not a matter of supplementing what has been physically lost, but must include social and cultural aspects. We will also conduct research based on the idea that by placing the residents, who are the bearers of the community, in the lead role, we can achieve a recovery that promotes maturity, rather than a recovery that overwrites the community.

This research was initially conducted for the purpose of reconstruction assistance, but in the process, the author conducted research using information obtained through material surveys on local history and self-governing activities, interview surveys on pre-disaster life, and participatory observation of reconstruction activities. In order to extract knowledge on co-creative reconstruction methods, the author focused on the actual state of cooperation between residents, experts involved in reconstruction support, and the government, based on past research conducted by the author, and extracted what could be considered co-creation from this.

Co-creative reconstruction is defined as a state in which a shared vision for reconstruction is created by each organization involved in the reconstruction process, with the residents at the core, and collaboration is generated beyond the organizational framework in order to achieve the objectives. This case study can be divided into the following three stages: the stage where the local residents start the recovery process, the stage where a vision for recovery is drawn up based on the recovery project organized by the government, and the stage where collaboration beyond the organizational framework is created to achieve the recovery vision.

Compared to normal urban development, reconstruction projects in disaster-stricken areas are carried out simultaneously in a short period of time. Therefore, in order to capture the details of reconstruction, it is necessary to limit the target area and continue participant observation. However, the limited number of areas to be studied makes it difficult to conduct comparative verification. In addition, the unclear concept of “co-creation” requires the formation of common values through the verification of various case studies. Therefore, it is essential to form an environment in which various case studies can be collected and discussed.

Many of the research reports on earthquake recovery are extracts on specific themes. As a result, it is difficult to obtain an overall picture of how specific areas are recovering. As such, there are few examples that can serve as a reference when confronting reconstruction and an exploratory approach to the unclear future is required. Therefore, this study has practical findings in that it presents concrete sample information by clearly indicating issues and reconstruction systems on a long-term time horizon.

It is nonsense to impose a uniform recovery plan in the midst of a mature society with increasingly diverse values. It is necessary to explore the possibility of bottom-up reconstruction in which residents play a leading role as a way to realize individualized and diverse reconstruction. This study presents the possibility of promoting reconstruction while maintaining equal relationships among residents, experts, and the government.

First, the study captures the actual situation of the village before the earthquake and the actual situation of the village during the reconstruction process, using the village as the basic unit. Second, it captures the reconstruction process of the village over a 10-year time frame. According to a specific timeline, the activities, discussions, and institutional changes to promote reconstruction are positioned. Third, in the limited phase of earthquake reconstruction, the project is providing information and analysis from a comprehensive and multifaceted perspective by narrowing down the target areas and continuing high-resolution surveys.

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.