Abstract
This book investigates what made a difference in the survival and recovery rates among the communities affected by the devastating earthquake Japan experienced on 11 March 2011, followed by a tsunami and nuclear power plant meltdown. Chapter 1 starts with the background of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Daniel Aldrich points out the gap between the theoretical linear process of survival, recovery, and resilience with the reality in the various Tohoku communities. In order to analyze the topic described above, Aldrich introduces the concepts of ‘horizontal’ connection between people and their social activities as well as ‘the vertical’ networks such as connection between local residents and the local or central governments. Then, Aldrich begins his analysis of survival and recovery on the individual level in Chapter 2. This chapter shares the personal stories of how individuals survived or helped others after the catastrophic disaster and the processes of rebuilding evacuees’ lives from the individual point of view. As Aldrich points out, the stereotypical image of Japanese society is that it holds harmonious views of displaying collectivistic behavioral patterns. However some evacuees in certain communities act selfishly and do not trust volunteers or other evacuees while other shelters and communities show a better social cohesion. Interviews and survey results show that individuals who are in a better-connected community organized themselves to restart their lives much sooner than the others. On the other hand, those who did not have strong social connections were unable to effectively organize their short-term shelters and communities. In Chapter 3, Aldrich focuses analysis on the village, town, and city levels; his regression analysis reveals that the communities with closer social ties before the disaster are associated with a better survival rate. Also, communities which are well connected with political figures and high ranking bureaucrats have faster recoveries than those with fewer connections. Furthermore, Chapter 4 illustrates that one prefectural government’s social networks with NGOs and NPOs are stronger than the other prefectures. Aldrich interprets this density of networking as the level of prefectural governance. The stronger governance in two prefectures shows the higher recovery rate in terms of economic and infrastructure activities than the other prefecture, which does not have strong governance. Chapter 5 moves to the national level of analysis. Japanese citizens have mistrusted their central government while the bond to their fellow citizens has become stronger after the disaster. One of the reasons is that the Japanese central government is using the same old ‘top-down’ approach with filtering the information about the nuclear power plant meltdown and the infrastructure-focused approach toward recovery such as constructing giant sea walls instead of taking the creative approach some citizens and organizations suggest. In Chapter 6, Aldrich makes international comparisons with China, Haiti, India, and Japan, where major earthquakes hit in the past few decades, on the analyses of their magnitudes, casualties, recovery, and governance. Aldrich argues that Japan’s high building standards helped to keep the number of deaths low compared to other countries. Meanwhile, weak political institutions in India and Haiti have difficulty enforcing higher standard building codes. On the other hand, the highly centralized government in China does not allow citizens to raise their concerns to change shoddy construction. The last chapter briefly summarizes the previous chapters to remind the importance of building social connections at the individual, societal, or national levels. At the same time, Aldrich describes how Japanese people’s attitudes shifted to move away from using nuclear power after the disaster. This disaster impacted not only Japan, but also nations such as Germany to move forward to de-nuclearize their power generation.
Throughout the book, Aldrich gives detailed information in a logical and readable manner. For instance, at the beginning, Aldrich describes how the Japanese local and central governments reacted, including detailed records of communication between Tokyo Electric Power Company and the government officials. At the same time, he inserts personal stories of initial reactions of people as a way of describing their survival mechanism and the subsequent actions of survivors as the processes of building support systems at the individual level in the midst of chaos. Many books share personal, often painful, yet touching stories of survivors and their memories of the family members and friends who did not survive (e.g., Ishii, 2014). Some other publications share heroic acts of evacuees, civil servants, and volunteers (e.g., Takino, 2015). Those publications may cause emotional contagion and let readers relive the moments, but underplay the role of sharing factual information about the incident itself or the aftermath, resulting in focusing on the glory of humanity. In contrast, with the objective tone of Aldrich’s writing, this book allows readers to grasp a massive amount of information on the background of the region, tragedy, and aftermath including successful and unsuccessful recovery among different communities in chronological order as if they were watching a high quality documentary film.
As the chapter moves into the meso-level of analysis, the main theme of this book is highlighted with the quantitative data. A wide range of variables are used to cover the numerous topics, from mental health, mortality rates, economic activities, population of the communities, to even the numbers of contacts the communities made with politicians. One analysis was especially interesting: that the communities with higher crime rates before the disaster (thus weaker social capital) have higher mortality rates. Aldrich uses the crime rate as an indicator of social capital, as robbery and assault would be difficult to commit when people are watching over their neighbors. As Aldrich points out, one might be skeptical about using crime rates as an indicator of the strength of social networks. This skeptical view is reasonable since countless sociological and criminological studies have suggested that the areas with high numbers of lower socioeconomic individuals are often associated with higher rates of street crimes. Therefore, the lower crime rate may be representing the number of individuals with higher SES in the community, not necessarily stronger social connections. Since whether the crime rates actually represent social capital of the community or merely the aggregated SES of individuals in the area is not the main theme of this book, it is understandable that Aldrich did not dive into deeper discussion to disabuse the skeptical view. However, this book should have mentioned the difficulty of conducting analysis on the subject of natural disaster. Unlike a well-planned experimental study, researchers have to rely on the previously collected data before the catastrophe happened (in this case, the crime rate before March 2011 as an independent variable) to see the effect of the disaster. Asking survivors to recall their level of social connections before the disaster is even more problematic than using the crime rate prior to the devastation since their answers are greatly influenced by the event, especially after experiencing such a horrific disaster. Therefore, selection bias can be easily assumed. With such restricted conditions, it actually makes sense to use the crime rate as a proxy for social networks as it is independent from any other, more directly related, variables, such as the magnitude of the earthquake or the heights of the tsunami, on the survival rate.
At the end, Aldrich warns that Japan’s resilience should not be discussed solely with reference to the stereotypical image of the country such as its homogeny, collectivistic non-confrontational attitude, and culture, which passively accepts mismanagement and poor governance. Aldrich and his colleagues witnessed various types of resistance, conflicts, and attempts to implement creative solutions by citizens.
Because Aldrich and his research team observed the Tohoku region with great attention to detail, this book offers concrete suggestions for better survival and recovery from future disasters. Aldrich recommends allocating more financial resources to community-friendly physical infrastructures such as community centers where people can gather and enjoy activities together. Also he mentions the timeshare program as a way of building social infrastructures: people volunteer their time to assist others in exchange for the community’s currency which can be used to enjoy the community’s facilities such as a hot bath house, or food from the local farmers. These attempts may speed up reconstruction and strengthen social ties, which may be more effective than building physical seawalls in terms of bringing people and businesses back to the affected areas. This book is not only academically sound, with detailed analysis, but also readable for policy makers and the general population to ponder their future plans to protect themselves. If Japan, as well as any country, is to prepare for unforeseen disasters, this book can give guidance for what individuals, communities, regions, or nations should do in order to foster maximum resilience.