This special collection of papers reflects the work of contributing authors to the newly released book Legacies of Fukushima: 3.11 in Context (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). The edited volume addresses the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan, taking a multi-dimensional, cross-disciplinary approach to understanding this epic disaster. The book is an intersectional collaboration that is unique in that it incorporates the work of Japan-area scholars, journalists, nuclear experts and Science, Technology and Society (STS) scholars from Japan and abroad, who discuss the trajectory of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in the first decade since its inception. There are 19 authors whose work is included in the book; this special edition of selected papers for The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus evokes that work, and while they do not entirely represent the scope of the material included in the edited volume, these papers delve into issues that any disaster studies scholar or student of the Fukushima nuclear disaster will find compelling.

Disaster commemoration serves as a moment to remember victims and honor survivors. In the case of 3.11, commemoration works differently. As a slow disaster, with radiation exposure and evacuation at the center of the story, 3.11 is not yet over. This places special importance on commemoration as a moment for memory, but also for ongoing commitments to research, justice, and health interventions for survivors.

When taking up the unlearned lessons of Fukushima, one of the biggest may have been the need for more robust oversight of the nuclear industry. In Japan, the failure of the major national news media to scrutinize the industry and hold it accountable was particularly glaring. Despite their own claims to serve as watchdogs on officialdom, the major media have instead covered Japan’s powerful nuclear industry with a mix of silent complicity and outright boosterism. This is true both before and after the Fukushima disaster. In the decades after World War II, when the nuclear industry was established, media played an active role in overcoming public resistance to atomic energy and winning at least passive acceptance of it as a science-based means for Japan to secure energy autonomy.

This article explores how the models of medical risk from radiation established in the aftermath of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are insufficient for understanding the risks faced by people in contaminated environments like Fukushima. These models focus exclusively on levels of external radiation, while the risk faced by people in areas affected by radioactive fallout comes from internalizing fallout particles. These models have helped to obscure the health impacts over the last 76 years of those exposed to fallout, from the people who experienced the Black Rain in Hiroshima, to the global hibakusha exposed through nuclear testing, production and accidents, and now to those living where the plumes deposited radiation in Fukushima.

We argue that the post-Fukushima nuclear safety debates in the United States and Europe fundamentally altered the definition of nuclear safety. In the United States, the industry effectively took control by strengthening technical measures as the solution to nuclear safety concerns. In France, technical solutions were part of the process, but they were less dominant than in the United States and were overshadowed by larger organizational shuffles. The European Union, in contrast, engaged in a drawn-out debate over the very definition of nuclear safety, resulting in a stress test initiative that, while cumbersome and frustrating to many, included truly deliberative elements and ultimately revealed just how precarious the definitions of control and nuclear safety were.

The first tsunami that hit northern Japan in March 2011 was a big wave of salt water. The second tsunami was comprised of cement dikes designed to protect against a tsunami. The third tsunami is a socio-political process that erases memory of the disaster. The nuclear disaster that followed the first tsunami has reactivated the dispute over the effects of low-dose radiation. This controversy, which dates back to the experience of the hibakusha in 1945, includes a problem of hermeneutics—a conflict of interpretation—over what is being counted as “data”.

A decade ago, Japan learned some bitter lessons from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, after ignoring global and local ones over the preceding four decades. But elements of the country clearly haven’t, whether it comes to the atom or dealing with an international event like the Tokyo Summer Olympics during a global pandemic. Because of Japan’s mishandling of the pandemic and new variants resistant to vaccines, whether the games, which a majority of the public wanted cancelled or postponed again, would have become a super-spreader event, trigger a new variant or create an explosion of COVID-19 cases or a combination thereof remained a continuing concern. What’s clear is that Tokyo put political, bureaucratic and commercial interests ahead of the health and wellbeing of the overall public —similar to what happened in the decades preceding Fukushima.

March 11, 2021 marked the tenth anniversary of Japan’s triple disaster of 2011. Residents of Fukushima towns which endured the greatest environmental, social, and economic impact of the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident have lived with uncertainty about the future for a full decade. Major infrastructure projects are fully or nearly complete, and decontamination efforts in reopened towns have largely concluded. Nevertheless, evacuee return rates have been low in most towns which had been placed under full evacuation orders. As a result, the current populations of many affected towns are less than 20% of their pre-disaster levels, and the majority of current residents over 65 years of age. Despite the huge challenges, the energy and know-how of the people of Fukushima are tremendous resources. Many see the possibility of new forms of long-term viability that capitalize on technology, the age of the population, and the ready availability of land and other resources. What has been achieved so far in realizing these visions has been made possible by an emergent network of informal community leaders, who display a charismatic, soft leadership style.