Oyster Tourism in Postdisaster Japan: Towards an Understanding of Human-Mollusk Relations in the Miyagi Prefecture

Abstract

This article is a qualitative, ethnographically informed exploration of the relations between the Miyagi Oysters (Crassostrea gigas) and the diverse social actors of northeastern Japan (Tōhoku), namely local sea farmers, domestic immigrants, and tourists, in the aftermath of the 2011 “triple disaster” (the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and related nuclear plant meltdown). I contend that the processes of post-disaster reconstruction have been significantly informed by the specific frames of human-oyster relations as they are developed in the sea farming bays of the municipality of Ishinomaki (Miyagi Prefecture). Individuating four fields of interest (environmental purity, experientiality, emic timeframes, and authenticity), I analyze the ongoing transformations prompted by the disaster on discourses of locality and self-representation and the interactions among local producers and non-local actors (visitors, volunteers, entrepreneurs) with the cycle of life of the Crassostrea. Within the interactions between locals and non-locals, the discursive characteristics of oyster sea farming in Miyagi are negotiated, shared, and contested through instances of transformative resilience during the progressive shift from “classic” modes of production towards the economies of domestic tourism, and the overlapping of local, bottom-up initiatives with organized top-down structures.