Toward a Critical Disaster Studies in Japan and Beyond: Issues in Theory and Research

At the heart of Japan's disaster prevention and management, which serves as a model for global initiatives, lies a focus on policies and practices grounded in technological and structured systems to address disasters across all phases through government-led institutional frameworks. However, over the past two decades, this approach has faced increasing challenges due to the growing scale, multi-hazard nature, and cascading impacts of disaster events. Moreover, the impact of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear incident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant during the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, signalled a tipping point and the end of the distinction between disastrous events caused by natural hazards and those anthropogenic. Drawing upon such epistemological evolution and related recent sociological study of disaster in Japan, this paper lays the theoretical framework for the presentations included in the session. It offers an outline of the evolution in the sociological study of disaster in Japan and the shift toward interdisciplinary, critical, context-based approaches to disaster, risk, vulnerability, and resilience that explore how pre-existing power relations in government, policy, and community stakeholders before disasters shape the event and the post-disaster outcomes in the short and long terms. This approach aims to enhance our understanding of disasters and to foster more integrated and context-sensitive strategies for managing risk and building resilience both in Japan and beyond, by examining enduring questions concerning the long-term availability of resources and power that shape their social construction.