Tsunami: Japan's Post-Fukushima Future

by Jeff Kingston (Editor/Introduction), David Pilling

Featuring the world’s leading Japan watchers. From haunting scenes in the hot zone to the nuclear, political, and economic future of a battered land.

"For the 20 years before this great earthquake disaster, our nation has seemed, in many ways, to be at an impasse. As we overcome the crisis created by this disaster, we must also overcome the preceding crisis, what could be called Japan’s structural crisis." — Naoto Kan

On March 11, 2011, Japan’s northern coast was shaken by the biggest earthquake ever to strike the island in recorded history. With a gigantic tsunami and the nuclear meltdown that followed, 3/11 was the worst disaster to hit the developed world for a hundred years. Confronted with tough questions about its dependence on nuclear power, about the competence of its leaders both in the private and public sectors, about the economy’s ability to rebound from a shock, the country has been plunged into crisis. After centuries of earthquakes, tsunamis, war, and a long list of other disasters, natural and unnatural, the Japanese people are accustomed to building back stronger -- but how do they recover from such a devastating blow, and what will that new future look like?

This unique Foreign Policy ebook, the first to respond to the quake in such depth, assembles an exclusive collection of top writers and scholars working in Japan today to answer these questions. Edited by Temple University’s Jeff Kingston, it showcases some of Japan’s leading writers and thinkers, from prominent journalists like Financial Times Asia-Pacific editor David Pilling to former Economist editor Bill Emmott to best-selling author Robert Whiting.

Genres: Japan, Asia

207 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comprehensive, but by now outdated

This book was published immediately after the triple disaster of the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Japan in March 2011. It provides broad coverage of the issues Japan was facing with regard to recovery, public policy, government response, and nuclear energy reliance. There is a lot of repetition between the articles, but it does give the reader a good sense of the time. Reading this 8 years after the disaster left me wondering which paths Japan chose to pursue. It was a book for a moment in time, and that moment has passed.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very insightful look into Japanese politics in relation to nuclear power, as well as how Japan relates to other countries politically in terms of the nuclear issue. It's also a very good primer for understanding nuances in nuclear power I'd never heard of before.

You won't find such a diverse collection of essays, nor such a straightforward look at how we got to the current situation in world nuclear power and opinions about it as this one. Well, not that I've read a lot about it, but that's just the problem, people don't read about it, they form their opinion from the media and governments, which have up to now often been driven by sheer profits and back room deals. With an issue as delicate as this one, it's time the general public examined the issue for itself, without unrealistic paranoia and without blind trust. This book is a good place to start.

Highly recommend it.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

a wide variety of looks at the politics and history of tsunamis in Japan. As it is a collection of essays, it does get tiresome as some of the topics include social media's role in recovery. Also, there is a large section devoted to Japan's energy way-forward, as well as the word's way-forward with regards to nuclear energy. On this topic, there was very little content that was not reflexive. I was hoping for a brighter view of how nuclear energy could be improved to better contribute to a difficult energy situation.