Repository | Book | Chapter

The triple disaster on March 11, 2011 obliterated entire cities, leaving only scraps, shards, and severed lives in its wake. But it did not erase traces of memory, ghosts, and rituals that gave new life to long-abandoned public works projects, machi-zukuri (town-building) plans, and disaster tourism. Grief-stricken survivors could not protect themselves from a second wave called Recovery and Reconstruction that swept into Tōhoku. Powered by slogans of hope and solidarity to people in despair wishing they could go back in time, the corporatist state has reaped huge profits by promising to make everything like it was before. This chapter argues that the triple disaster allows us to observe the rivalry between capitalist and communal forces along Japan's northeastern coast during the recovery period. Dedicated volunteers and aid workers from all over Japan and around the world gathered to help survivors recover from the trauma by mucking out fishing factories, visiting temporary housing communities to drink tea with elderly survivors, working on origami projects, and repairing fishermen's netting. And reconstruction plans dwarfed their 'soft" approach at recovery. For what drives disaster capitalism is not the qualitative healing of survivors, but the quantitative recovery of economic opportunities.

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-2007-0_5

Full citation: