Political Economy, Ideology, and the “After-Affects” of the Fukushima Disaster

Abstract Critical disaster studies challenge the metaphysical binary of nature–society to reveal the complexity and hybridity of disasters instead. Disasters are recognized not as natural phenomena but as social constructs in this perspective. An example is the explosion and radioactive release at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant following the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster that occurred on March 11, 2011. This disaster was not only a “natural disaster” caused by an earthquake and tsunami but also a product of social processes woven together by political economy at national and local scales and cultural ideologies and practices. Power stations were required to industrialize Japan and accomplish economic prosperity similar to that achieved by the United States after World War II, and nuclear power plants were viewed as pivotal. To install these plants in Japan, a novel geopolitical rhetoric of nuclear power—“peaceful use”—was articulated to allay social anxiety concerning nuclear power, and this ideology was materially displayed to the public at the Exposition of Peaceful Use of Atomic Energy in 1955. Viewing the Fukushima disaster as a social process enables the elaboration of how disasters remain ongoing well after their initial inception. The disaster constituted a sense of national pride to overcome the difficulty, and it created a social divide in Fukushima Prefecture and beyond by invoking many kinds of emotions, such as anxiety, fear, and jealousy toward evacuees. The disaster’s impacts are viscous, leading people to experience this disaster in highly variegated ways.