Gender, Culture, and Disaster in Post–3.11 Japan by Mire Koikari

Abstract

Reviewed by: Gender, Culture, and Disaster in Post–3.11 Japan by Mire Koikari Margherita Long (bio) Gender, Culture, and Disaster in Post–3.11 Japan. By Mire Koikari. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. xii, 196 pages. $120.00, cloth; $39.95, paper; $35.95, E-book. One of the most satisfying things this book does is reclaim feminism from a government policy called danjo kyōdō (男女共同), or gender coparticipation. Originally included in the Danjo Kyōdō Sankaku Kihonhō (Basic Act for Gender Equal Society, 1999), the concept gained new relevance after 3.11 when the Abe Shinzō administration adopted its principles to promote Japan as a champion of "gender and resilience whose expertise benefits other nations in Asia and the Pacific" (p. 45). Author Mire Koikari, a senior scholar of sociology and women's studies, performs close readings of disaster manuals for women issued by An-an magazine, Kurowassan magazine, trade presses, and the Tokyo municipal government. She shows how, far from promoting gender equality, the "risk management" and resilience (kyōjinka) discourses that proliferated after 3.11 call on women to embrace traditionally gendered care work and hold themselves, not the state, responsible for keeping families safe. Particularly powerful is Koikari's critique of a set of 2014 pamphlets issued by Abe's Gender Equality Bureau in English ("Learning from Adversity") and Japanese ("Danjo kyōdō sankaku [End Page 145] no shiten no bōsai, fukkō no torikumi shishin"). The pamphlets argue that, as the "chief agents" of resilience building, women must "share leadership roles in all aspects of the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) process" (pp. 44, 62). If women hold at least 30 per cent of leadership roles, the pamphlets maintain, then sanitary napkins and infant items won't be forgotten from stockpiled supplies, and childcare, eldercare, and sexual assault prevention won't be forgotten at evacuation shelters. Koikari points to the slippage between the terms "equality" and "coparticipation," noting that the former is missing from the substance of the policies and guidebooks and that the latter "sanctif[ies] maternal duties and obligations" (p. 65). Her point is that feminism should open spaces for thought and action outside neoliberalism and neoconservatism, rather than accept them as the status quo. She quotes David Harvey on the perverse cycle in which neoliberalism and neoconservatism reinforce each other, because atomization, individualism, and competition in a neoliberal economy create instability, insecurity, and disorder, and these in turn lead to nationalist calls for morality, solidarity, and tradition (p. 20). Reading calls for care work by women as calls for just this sort of nationalism and tradition, Koikari traces Abe's post–3.11 policy to a June 2011 symposium convened by women instrumental in crafting the 1999 Danjo Kyōdō Sankaku legislation. During and after the 2011 symposium, all advocated "gender coparticipation" in disaster recovery, all pressed the government to adopt their ideas, and all, according to Koikari, "consider their mobilization a successful instance of women's and feminist activism" (p. 69). Readers get a glimpse of what might have prompted Koikari to write her book when we read about organizations set up by these same figures. Launched after the success of the 2011 symposium, their groups Women's Network for East Japan Disaster: Rise Together! and Japan Women's Network for Disaster Risk Reduction (JWNDRR), became "conspicuous presences" (p. 69) at international events hosted by, for instance, the United Nations. They also "actively pursu[ed] partnerships with the University of Hawai'i, the University of Delaware, United Nations University, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)" (p. 69). What must it have been like for Koikari, a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Hawai'i, to have been asked to partner with the JWNDRR? It is an interesting question for feminist academics on the left these days when feminist discourses, in Koikari's words, are "increasingly appropriated to enable, rather than obstruct, the entrenchment of dominant political, economic and cultural dynamics" (p. 71). If indeed an offer of collaboration was made, I think we can assume Koikari declined it. When we...