Making Sense of the Disaster

Abstract

Now a word Japanese, is date when earth's tectonic forces physically reconfigured Japan. Nearly three years since March 11, 2011, nightmare began, Japanese government has confirmed deaths of 16,000 people; addition, several thousand more remain missing and presumed killed by devastation unleashed from 9.0-magnitude earthquake and monstrous tsunami ensued. Three of six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced meltdowns, and according to official statistics, 282,000 people are still refugees within Japan, unable to return home. Many have moved from country's northeastern Tohoku region because of infrastructure damage, while many more have dispersed because radiation levels their houses and villages exceed acceptable norms. Fear and mistrust concerning what Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) deem safe levels of radiation propel them as well.With characteristic clarity, intellect, and scholarly rigor, Richard Samuels has engaged this unfolding maelstrom head-on to produce 3.11: Disaster and Change Japan. Moving categorically through three areas-security, energy, and local public administration-Samuels argues thus far fallout from this unimaginable trifecta of disasters has been not only imaginable but also predictable. Samuels explains of post-3.11 Japan political actors spun stories to help make sense of disaster, always ways consistent with what they already 'knew' to be true (p. 184). His elaboration brings him to conclude was simply continuation of normal politics by additional means (p. 185). Throughout book, Samuels thoughtfully explicates his thesis of continuity over rupture: Japan which who thought utilities were villains before 3.11 insisted 3.11 proved their point. Those who believed DJP [Democratic Party of Japan] was a collection of incompetent parvenus...now had additional evidence...[and] supporters of Japan-U.S. and of Japanese military renewed their claim they were right all along (p. 184-85). Writing most specifically about security, he emphasizes that, in short, there was no major Tohoku dividend-either for war-fighting capacity of Japanese troops or for U.S.-Japan alliance (p. 109).All this notwithstanding-and what will likely be his pathbreaking contribution to assessments of 3.11-Samuels's own detailed examination of rescue and relief operations conducted by Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) suggests if we wait just a little bit longer, dividend for SDF may be rather lucrative indeed. In short, Samuels describes how during 3.11 a discursive shift took place alongside troops' actions, one has continued to secure widespread buy-in for SDF throughout Japanese society ways that-if not entirely new-have greatly expanded level of support beyond anything seen before 2011 post-1945 era.The SDF's moment 3.11 spotlight shapes book's fourth chapter, Dueling Security Narratives, which Samuels establishes three categories of responses to what took place: wake-up call (comments from those largely on right who urged nation to get in gear and prepare for its real enemies), proof of concept (views held by centrists who saw the deterrent power of alliance SDF's performance working together with U.S. troops), and disarm (the largely leftist perspective that Japan's soldiers get more shovels than guns) (p. 83-86). Next, Samuels views these categories through secondary prisms interrogate what we might glean for future place and function of SDF Japanese society. Taken as a whole, analysis ties well with his previous work on Japanese military, as well as with other analyses of soft changes were already afoot within SDF long before March 11, 2011, order to make its existence more palatable to Japanese society general. …