Fall-out from Fukushima: Nuclear Evacuees Seeking Compensation and Legal Protection After the Triple Meltdown

Research output: Book/ReportBook

Abstract / Description of output

This book shows how the Fukushima plaintiffs have challenged narratives of safety and risk containment produced by TEPCO and the Japanese government through offering new empirical data on risk perceptions and life choices of some nuclear evacuees.

Considering the Fukushima evacuees’ disappearance from public discourse in Japan, the book engages with theoretical writings on risk, neoliberal governmentality and citizen science. Chapters draw on a wide range of anthropologically-related methodologies including socio-linguistics, participant observation, and qualitative interviews. Themes of self-governance, resistance, gender, kinship, class and social change surface throughout, setting the Fukushima experience in a broad historical, social, and comparative context. This is the first ethnographic account of the Fukushima litigation and the first extensive qualitative study documenting the worldviews and living conditions of nuclear evacuees who moved outside Fukushima Prefecture, with a particular focus on underrepresented groups (single mothers, elderly and disabled evacuees). The history of industrial disasters and the role of citizens in shaping environmental policy in Japan is also evaluated.

Fall-out from Fukushima sets out to be a manifesto for understanding and supporting post-nuclear disaster societies, and will appeal to students and scholars of social, legal, and linguistic anthropology, science and technology studies, as well as Japanese studies.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherRoutledge
Number of pages240
Edition1
ISBN (Print)9781032033006
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 5 Aug 2021

Publication series

NameNissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • Japan
  • Risk
  • Fukushima disaster
  • BIOPOLITICS
  • Gendered discourses
  • Legal Anthropology
  • Ethnography
  • Fukushima Litigation
  • Collective civil lawsuits
  • Nuclear evacuees
  • 3.11
  • VULNERABILITY
  • Governance
  • Radiation
  • RESILIENCE
  • Resistance
  • CITIZEN SCIENCE
  • Hope

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