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Beyond reality - or - An illusory ideal: pro-nuclear Japan's management of migratory flows in a nuclear catastrophe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Extract
Three years have passed since the earthquake and consequent tsunami of March 11, 2011, which led to the explosion of a nuclear power plant in Northeastern Japan. Since then, a central concern in managing the damage is how to handle the relocation of people displaced by the destruction of the earthquake-driven tsunami and the dangers of radiation. In December of that year, we wrote up a precise assessment of the damage caused to the housing sector, the system for rehousing victims of the tsunami, and also the nuclear contamination that has spread widely in part of the Fukushima region and neighboring districts. The government reported the existence of 160,000 displaced persons, of whom 100,000 came from within the prefecture and 60,000 outside of it. Since the government adopted a policy favoring the return of the displaced to their home districts, which are still heavily contaminated, the official estimate today is 140,000 refugees: 100,000 within the prefecture and 40,000 outside it. However, these official figures are the fruit of an extremely restrictive registration system, to which a not insignificant number of inhabitants have refused to submit. The displaced population is in fact appreciably greater than the official statistics would have us believe. What is the situation of nuclear refugees in Japan today? What local policies have been put in place to protect the inhabitants during these three years, as the government sought to manage a disaster of global proportions? What are the motivations of the authorities in seeking to compel the population to return to zones that are still partly contaminated, despite the ongoing risks and in the absence of any request to return? These are a few issues that I will seek to clarify in this paper.
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References
Notes
1 C. ASANUMA-BRICE (2011): Logement social au Japon: Un bilan après la crise du 11 mars 2011, Revue Urbanisme, Nov.
2 C. ASANUMA-BRICE et T. RIBAULT (2012): Quelle protection humaine en situation de vulnérabilité totale? - Logement et migration intérieure dans le désastre de Fukushima - Report within the program Nucléaire, risque et société of the Interdisciplinarity Project of the CNRS.
3 J.-J. Delfour (2014): La condition nucléaire, réflexions sur la situation atomique de l'humanité, Paris, éditions L'échappée.
4 Among others: Le Monde (02/05/2013): «Le Duo Mitsubishi-Areva va construire quatre réacteurs nucléaires en Turquie»; Le Parisien (26/10/2013): “Nucléaire: accord de partenariat entre Areva, Mon-Atom et Mitsubishi”.
5 Le Monde (16/06/2014): «Le Japon revient dans la course aux ventes d'armes».
6 F. Romario (1994): Energie, économie, environnement: Le cas de l'électricité en Europe entre passé, présent et futur, ed. Librairie DROZ, Genève.
7 Interview conducted with T. Ribault in Fukushima in November 2013. Lochard was referring here to the ETHOS project established by the CEPN in Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2012, with the aim of providing the population living in contaminated areas with knowledge of radioactivity protection, so as to shift responsibility for their protection from the state and/or TEPCO to local people. We may call this the self-management of its protection.
8 The Fukushima court ordered TEPCO to pay compensation of 49,000,000 JPY.
9 C. ASANUMA-BRICE (2013) Fukushima, une démocratie en souffrance, Revue Outre terre-Revue Française de géopolitique, Mars.
10 Yomiuri, 9 mai 2013: “Announcement on May 7, 2013 by the nuclear disaster countermeasures headquarters [joint measures council for nuclear disaster] (原子力災害対策本部) of the elimination of the previously off-limits special surveillance zone starting on the 28th of this month.»
11 Fukushima Minpō, 23 juin 2014: 10 years after the accident, the government takes stock, with measures established following the decontamination of the difficult return zone, at less than 20 msv 事故後１０年全て２０ミリシーベルト未満 帰還困難区域除染後の線量 国が試算
12 Emmy E. Werner et Ruth S. Smith (1989), Vulnerable but Invincible: A Longitudinal Study of Resilient Children and Youth, Broché; Boris Cyrulnick (1999), Un merveilleux malheur, éd. Odile Jacob (2011), Resilience: How your inner strength can set you free from the past, Tarcher.
13 G. DJAMENT-TRAN, M. REGHEZZA-ZITT (2012): Résiliences urbaines Les villes face aux catastrophes, ed. Le Manuscrit.
14 This irresponsibility is a product of cutting the link between the different actors of the city's production and practice that is necessary for effective responsibility. Cf. J.TRONTO «The term responsibility (…) refers to the idea of a «response», that is to say to a clearly rational attitude.» (p.103), in Carol Gilligan, Arlie Hochschild, Joan TRONTO (2013): Contre l'indifférence des privilégiés, éd. Payot.
15 Fukushima Minpō, Oct. 10, 2013: Rise in suicide rates due to the prolonged period of exile - in the (Fukushima) prefecture, and in the three devastated prefectures.
“The Minister of Internal Affairs has recognized a tendency towards a greater number of suicides in the prefecture due to the accident at the Daiichi nuclear plant and the disaster in Eastern Japan. As of the end of August of this year, the figure rose to 15 people; through all of last year, the tally was 13 people, while the number of suicides had already reached 10 two years ago. With five times as many suicides as in the prefecture of Iwate, Fukushima prefecture has the greatest number of the three devastated prefectures. Specialists point to the psychological burden presented by the length of their refuge far from home. It is to be feared that this tendency [to commit suicide] to increase will accelerate; emergency measures are becoming necessary.”
16 平成２６年度 原子力関係経費既算要求額、第３４回原子力委員会資料第６号。.
17 The 52nd Annual Meeting of Japan Society of Clinical Oncology: Kids cancer seminar-Because you live in Fukushima there is a necessity for education about cancer!
18 NHK, June 10, 2014, a manual teaching how «to live with radioactivity» “放射能と暮らす”ガイド is henceforth being distributed in local communities.
19 The 52nd Annual Meeting of Japan Society of Clinical Oncology
20 “放射能と暮らす”ガイド (the number of nuclear-related deaths surpasses 1100 people, with an increase of 70 people in six months) Tōkyō Shinbun, Sept. 11, 2014.
21 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Anand Grover, ONU, Mission to Japan (15- 26 November 2012).
22 「関連死で自殺歯止めかからず 福島県内 (suicides tied to the accident continue unabated inside Fukushima Prefecture), Fukushima Minpō, 21 juin 2014.
23 「甲状腺がん、疑い含め１０４人 福島の子供３０万人調査」 (Thyroid cancer, 104 personnes, enquête sur 300 000 enfants de Fukushima), Asahi, 24 août 2014.
24 2014年8月17日「放射線についての正しい知識を。」という政府広報が、朝日新聞、毎日新聞、読売新聞、産経新聞、日経新聞の大手５紙と、福島民報と福島民友の地方紙２紙に掲載された。 (Report made public on August 17, 2014 under the title “For an exact understanding of radiation” in five national papers: Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri, Sankei, Nikkei; and two local ones: Fukushima Minpō et Fukushima Minyū.) The report was also carried by the government's internet-TV channel. See Dr. Keiichi Nakagawa (Associate Professor, Tokyo University Hospital)
25 Basic reconstruction information.
26 WHO, Health Risk Assessment, 2013.
27 津田敏秀、「100msvをめぐって繰り返される誤解を招く表現」、科学、岩波、2 0 1 4 年5月、 pp.534-530. TSUDA Toshihide, «Around 100 msv, declarations that multiply the misunderstandings » Science Review, Iwanami, May 2014, pp. 534-540.
28 Keith Baverstock, «2013 UNSCEAR Report on Fukushima: a critical appraisal», August 24, 2014.
29 Conference Program, International Academic Conference: Radiation, Health, and Society: Post – Fukushima Implications for Health Professional Education, 21-24 Nov. 2013, p.79.