Japan After March 11th 2011: Between Swift Reconstruction and Sustainable Restructuring

Over five years after the “triple disaster” of an earthquake, a tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant that devastated Japan’s Tohoku region on March 11th, 2011, reconstruction is still progressing slowly. The difficulties are unprecedented and vast in scope: over 400 communities in 62 municipalities are affected in six different prefectures, along hundreds of kilometres of coastline. The challenges are complex and differ in their particular manifestations: earthquake damage, displacement from nuclear disaster, and tsunami destruction. They are dynamically interrelated and cumulative; rural regions, long confronted with depopulation and ageing, are additionally affected by disaster, and the effects are exacerbated by slow recovery and uncertainty. It will be difficult to rebuild more resilient communities that are sturdy and adaptable in order to respond to the challenges of inevitable demographic and economic transformation and global climate change, if planners ignore countervailing trends of demographic decline and environmentally harmful lifestyle preferences. The purpose of this chapter is therefore threefold: First, to provide a comprehensive overview of factors that are complicating reconstruction in Tohoku; second, to show that many of the underlying, structural problems of rural Japan are caused by a proliferation of environmentally harmful lifestyles, which existing top-down urban planning prescriptions fail to address. Thirdly, to stress the importance of complementary, ‘soft’ policies that aim at raising environmental awareness and strengthening social resilience by reinforcing community networks and utilizing endogenous development potentials.