Disability, Destitution, and Disaster: Surviving the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in Japan

Abstract

On the morning of January 17, 1995, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck the port city of Kobe, Japan. 6,400 people died and over $80 billion in property damage occurred. Among those rendered homeless was a small group of people with severe disabilities. Over the next decade, this group leveraged discourses surrounding civil society, disability, poverty, and the role of government in natural disasters, to become one of the most powerful and vocal proponents of disability rights in Japan. What lessons can we learn to make disability advocacy a leading, rather than trailing, element of social policy?