Fukushima Turns 13 in an Ever-More Nuclear World
March 11, 2024
On the thirteenth anniversary of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, two prominent American scholars discuss the event itself and the current socioeconomic circumstances of the individuals impacted by the nuclear catastrophe.
• Useful information links
• Jotaro Wakamatsu's poem
Born and raised in postwar Tokyo, I’m a product of World War II. My father was part of the US Occupation, and my mother was a young woman living with her family near his base. I was educated in American schools, so it took time for me to become literate enough in Japanese to study Japan’s classical literature in graduate school. I taught for many years in the Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations at the University of Chicago. The nuclear disaster that began in northeastern Japan with a huge tsunami-earthquake on March 11, 2011, has shaped my retirement. As I try to write about it, I want to keep in mind what I’ve learned from earlier projects, such as the role of the emperor (In the Realm of a Dying Emperor) or prewar leftist culture movements (For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature, co-authored). Understanding how the “Fukushima” nuclear disaster is being lived asks us to grapple with the global as well as Japanese history of atomic bombs, the fraught trajectory of science and medicine, the role of education, of the judiciary—really, all of life, as much as we can take in. I hope to keep sharing what I learn, especially from the brave and generous people who speak and stand, for themselves and for those who can’t, and for those who don’t know that they, too, are caught in this process without end.
I’m an agenderflux neurodiverse Nikkei person who came to be passionate about the study of oppression through my experiences of living as a neurodiverse trans immigrant in the late capitalist United States, and my encounters with abolitionist, trans, decolonial, and leftist movements here and in Japan. I came into research about the TEPCO Fukushima nuclear disaster through meeting women in the anti-irradiation (datsuhibaku) movement. My dissertation, “Exposed Life Runs Free,” looks at how speculation and heteropatriarchy in the state management of the TEPCO Fukushima nuclear disaster resecure financial and emotional investments in nuclear imperialism and colonialism. I enjoy collective dreaming and making art about queerness, gendered experiences of disability, and learning land-based practices. I don’t yet know my role but I hope to contribute towards building unity and solidarity in abolishing the nuclear industry in its entirety, including all of the hierarchies of worth on which it relies.
"Land and Labor Acknowledgement" by Symphony B. Fletcher, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health | MPH Candidate 2024 University of Chicago l Pritzker School of Medicine Class of 2025; prepared for UC Juneteenth 2021, Reparations Panel.