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Tying Knots of En: An Ethnography among Uncertain Walls in Fukushima's Gray Zone in 2023

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Ryo Morimoto
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Abstract

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Twelve years after the TEPCO nuclear accident in coastal Fukushima, the newly revised compensation policy and the discharge of water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Station are threatening to produce social and political divisions among the residents in coastal Fukushima between scientific experts and lay public, and between countries. In a time of heightened societal divisions, what is the role of scholars? By sharing ethnographic stories in Fukushima's gray zone in 2023, the essay explores how scholars can learn from people on the ground to challenge narratives and systems that divide people from the environment and the land from the ecosystem to explore stories, voices, and perspectives that provide connections. (This article is based on Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima's Gray Zone, recently published by the University of California Press).

Keywords

Coastal FukushimaNuclear AccidentWater DischargeNuclear Compensationen/縁
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 21 , Issue 10 , October 2023 , e3
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2023

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