< Could You Hear the Voices of the Dead? Religion's Role in the Great East Japan Earthquake>

Many lives were lost in the Great East Japan Earthquake, and today the life of those who survived the ordeals is filled with a sense of guilt that they let their families and friends die in vain. Many are unable to overcome their unfilled sense of responsibility, and some struggle to go on living. Considering the role of sacrifices that the Tōhoku region had historically played for modern and postwar Japan, this presentation seeks to find a universal lesson to pacify the dead and mourn them with the survivors by broadly examining many undiscussed aspects of economic and national successes of Japan since the age of the nation-state.

<Documentary Film: Human Error>

What does it mean to be forced to leave one's home due to an invisible threat, with no timeline for return? The Japanese government claims that "everything is under control" in Fukushima. But is it? Eight years have passed since the morning of March 12, 2011, when the decision to evacuate more than 150,000 residents was made due to the nuclear explosion. This film follows a group of people whose lives have forever been disrupted by the disaster: a nuclear power plant executive, a priest, a travel inn owner, a farmer, the mayor of a local town, an 86 year old evacuee, and a 19 year old teenager. As villages inside the evacuation zone prepare for its reopening, successful resurrection depends on the return of their citizens and the perception that spaces are once again safe for everyday human life.   

Professor Satō Hiroo, Graduate School Faculty of Arts and Letters, Tōhoku University

<The Watchful Gaze of the Dead--Catastrophe and Salvation in Japan>

Without scientific knowledge, the people of premodern societies in Japan tried to understand natural disasters through their association with transcendent beings (kami). In ancient Japan, natural disasters were interpreted as messages, that is, vengeful curses, from the kami. With the establishment of a systematic cosmology during the middle ages, the causes of catastrophes were explained in terms of the law of causes and effect according to which punishment and salvation were delivered by the kami. With the onset of the early modern period, the sense of reality inherent in the perceptions of fundamental beings declined, and the salvation of the dead could no longer be entrusted to the other-worldly kami. People then came to terms with catastrophes as natural disasters that must be faced. Rituals and customs, carried out over long periods, were put in place to raise the dead to the status of ancestral spirits. In addition to a shift from the traditional world in which kami, the living, and the dead coexisted, toward a shutting out of the latter group, the process of modernization brought with it a restructuring of society around the exclusive rights and interests of human beings. The experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake has been an opportunity to reconsider the path ahead, and to reconsider responses to catastrophe which display the modern tendency to focus on the concerns of the living to the exclusion of those of the dead.  

<The Role of Culture in Time of Crisis: Collectivism and Individualism in the Coastal Fishing after 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami>

As symbolized in Sushi or raw-fish food, the fishing is a vital industry in Japan and a crucial aspect in the understanding of Japanese history and culture. While the current fishing production is supported by the pelagic fishing in far ocean with a larger business scale, the small-scale coastal fishing is also significant because it can support various conditions of local economy. Anthropologists have conventionally regarded the fishing industry as a source that generates tradition in the local regions. The 3.11 earthquake and tsunami heavily damaged the local fishing industry in the Pacific by killing people, destroying boats and facilities, and bringing debris into the sea. I will describe the ethnography of the coastal fishermen in post-disaster settings and explain the dynamism of culture in the time of crisis. Collectivism and individualism as social attributes would be the key argument. I also consider the role of culture in disaster risk and reduction policies.