The Epilogue traces the decline of US survivors’ civil rights activism in the US and the increased trans-Pacific collaboration among American, Korean, Japanese survivors aimed at obtaining compensation from the Japanese government. This development, based on the era‘s notion of human rights, was shaped by the precedents set by Korean survivors. By the turn of the twenty-first century, Korean survivors successfully sued the Japanese government for its failure to treat Korean survivors fairly. As victims of the Japanese wartime empire, Koreans carried more leverage than Americans when they confronted the Japanese government. Japanese survivors, too, urged their government to extend benefits to non-Japanese survivors. As more survivors came together, both the US and Japanese governments exhibited a tenacious refusal to recognize the bombs‘ human cost. Ultimately, US survivors’ history shows how nation-states’ failure to grasp the nuclear injury continues to shape historical understanding, suppressing along the way the voices of people who have long been bridging the nations. Built on this failure is the misguided policy of nuclear buildup in the name of national security.

This concluding chapter offers a reassessment of informal life politics in the modern Japanese context. The activities explored in book can, from one perspective, be seen as having had very little effect on mainstream political life in Japan: indeed, they have often deliberately eschewed engagement with mainstream political institutions. But it can be argued that, as well as improving the quality of life for communities directly concerned, these activities have helped to offer an alternative understanding of ‘the political’ itself: an understanding that speaks to the crisis of democracy which confronts the world today. As this chapter acknowledges, the book has only been able to address limited facets of the rich history of informal life politics in Japan, but it is hoped that it has helped to open up a perspective that can be further developed in the future, as researchers and activists continue to seek a path forward out of the twenty-first century crisis of democracy.