Gender, Culture, and Disaster in Post-3.11 Japan offers a methodical and compelling analysis of neoliberal, neonationalist, gendered, and militarist narratives that seek to naturalize specific notions of safety and security in the aftermath of the devastating Triple Disaster in northeast Japan in 2011. Mire Koikari provides incisive critique of both the entities that are investing in and shaping the cultural production of “disaster resilience” and the calculated content of the messaging. In her persuasive close readings of magazines, books, television programs, films, videos, promotional pamphlets, posters, websites, tour planning and promotion, expos, and more, she argues that notions of risk containment, crisis management, disaster recovery, and national resilience are being configured and mobilized through particular emotive terms—for example, jijo (self-help), jimae (self-reliance), sokojikara (power of resilience), kizuna (bonds), and kyōjo (community/mutual help).
What emerges is a picture of how disaster discourse diminishes and diffuses state and corporate responsibilities, assigning “recovery” duties to ordinary men, women, and children while ignoring or obfuscating the ongoing economic hardships of the region and the long-term nuclear implications of the Fukushima meltdown. Moreover, Koikari underscores the ways in which exhortations to take responsibility for recovery and risk containment are couched in national(ist) terms that uncritically hark back to the troubling language and mindsets of imperial and wartime Japan while repackaging Japan's military as primarily a humanitarian entity. Ultimately, this project asks us to consider the “generative power of disaster” and question these emerging regimes of power.
Gender, Culture, and Disaster in Post-3.11 Japan consists of an introduction, short conclusion, and four substantive chapters. The first chapter, “Re-masculinizing the Nation: Resilient Manhood and Revitalized Nationhood,” tracks the deployment of prescriptive modes of masculinity in post-3.11 disaster discourse. Koikari treats the recent (re)incarnation of Japanese masculinity as promoted through, for example, films (Shin Godzilla), “heroes” (Sasaki Norio, coach of the women's soccer team that won the World Cup in 2011), and exhortations defining “manhood” through hyper-stereotypical traits: physical and psychological courage, dedication, and stoicism. Emphasizing men's “natural” roles as protectors and heroes, state, business, and military interests promote neoliberal notions that link personal responsibility and national resilience, captured in the widely circulated phrase kokubō danshi (men who defend the nation). Moreover, Koikari highlights the proliferation of language that reinforces connections between manhood and the military through the resurrection of an ostensible martial “inheritance,” namely, bushidō. However, she astutely asserts that these preoccupations reveal deep anxieties about the precarious place of masculinity and men in modern Japan as neoliberal policies continue to diminish economic security.
Women are also marshaled to join the disaster recovery efforts. In chapter 2, “Training Women for Disasters: Domesticity and Preparedness in the Age of Uncertainty,” Koikari illuminates the contours of “security moms,” “resilience girls,” and “feminists,” who are modeled in and manifested through articles in popular lifestyle magazines, disaster readiness fairs, government websites featuring women's voices, and training picnics and camps that involve both mothers and children. Her analysis reveals how calculated narratives brand essentialist notions of women's “inherent” inclination toward domesticity, caregiving, and community involvement as “women's empowerment.” Interestingly, it also emphasizes the ways in which the “militarization of food and foodways” is accomplished by fetishizing “survival meals” (saba-meshi) and “military meals” (miri-meshi) (p. 53) and how neoliberal logic encourages women to “contribute to the nation” by entering the economic sector through sanctioned female entrepreneurial efforts, such as restaurants and day care. Koikari's examples, which range from the mundane—exhortations to disaster-proof homes—to the disturbing— assertions that traditional Japanese foods make Japanese bodies more resistant to nuclear radiation—critique how state and business forces aim to brand Japan as a pro-feminist nation, even exporting its “model” and expertise to other nations in Asia.
“Securitizing Childhood: Children and Disaster Readiness Education” homes in on the mobilization of children—their bodies, minds, and imaginations. Through books, manga, toys, games, kamishibai (paper theater), and educational materials, Koikari highlights how youths are trained to accept the responsibility of disaster prevention and preparedness. She elaborates how even Anpanman, the universally adored character, originally conceptualized as an antiwar figure, has been pressed into the disaster recovery/resilience regime through his repurposed theme song and a new hero-themed card game that makes the tenets of self-help (jijo) and community support (kyōjo) fun. The neoliberal terms “creative reconstruction,” “human resource development,” and “cultivation of bonds” are made “the central pillars” of the recovery/resilience education for children, which are promoted through the catchall slogan “zest for life” (ikiru chikara) (p. 78). The disquieting cute-ification of the military through its “kid site” website exhibits highly gendered and racialized content, for instance, in the tales of Prince Pickles and Ms. Parsley, which emphasize the military as a humanitarian entity. Koikari's readings of the numerous volumes of post-3.11 illustrated moral tales (bidan) reveal a range of messaging tactics with themes that concurrently celebrate the revival of the ancient regional Sōma Wild Horse Chase Festival and traditional moral and social values that idolize martial masculinity.
“Mobilizing Paradise: Hawai‘i in Post-Disaster National Imagination” is perhaps the most unexpected and intriguing chapter. Here, Koikari disrupts depoliticized ties between the marginalized people of the Tōhoku region and indigenous Hawaiians, critiquing the erasures of Japanese and Western imperialism in the romanticized tropes of “paradise” and “healing.” She presents a seemingly incongruous pairing: coal miners, especially Korean subjects under Japanese colonial rule, and “hula girls,” specifically those of the Tōhoku institution Spa Resort Hawaiian, whose parent company historically owned and operated many local mines. From this, Koikari untangles interlocking webs of violence and power: in Japan, the long-term manipulation of the impoverished northeastern region to provide the energy (coal/nuclear) for the metropolitan center and the nation's political and financial elites, and in Hawai‘i, the native Hawaiians whose agency and autonomy have been usurped by mainland Americans and powerful Japanese and Japanese American entities that continue to exoticize and commodify their indigenous worldview and practices. Besides analyzing children's stories that romanticize “dancing maidens” (Hula Girl and Her Pet Dog Choco), the seemingly innocuous Hawaiian “healing tours” for children from Tōhoku that serve as branding campaigns for the corporate sponsors and political figures (“Rainbow for the Kids” project), and the national tour of Spa Resort Hawaiian “hula girls” to reassure Japanese of Tohoku's recovery and resilience (Kizuna Caravan), Koikari questions justifications of bathing in “the dream of recuperation” while circumventing questions of power and responsibility.
In this short review, I am unable to do justice to the plethora of curious, fascinating, and disturbing details that Koikari provides in her cogent and enlightening study. Gender, Culture, and Disaster in Post-3.11 Japan is infinitely readable without compromising scholarly rigor. Useful for researchers and instructors (especially as a strong example of critical reading in the field of cultural studies), this work is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary Japan and the concerning trends of the neoliberal, neonationalist re-visioning of Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 Triple Disaster.
