Aspired Communities, Contested Futures - Transcript

Opener (00:00:02)

This is the Nordic Asia Podcast.

Satoko Naito (00:00:08)

Welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Satoko Naito from the Center for East Asian studies at the University of Turku in Finland. Today I am grateful to be joined by Doctor Pilvi Posio, senior researcher at the Center. Her dissortation looked to long-term recovery efforts following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Northeastern Japan. Thank you so much Pilvi for your time today.

Pilvi Posio (00:00:39)

Thank you also for inviting me.

Satoko Naito (00:00:42)

We're recording on March 10th 2023, meaning it is now almost exactly 12 years since the devastating earthquake and tsunami claimed nearly 20 thousand lives and displaced and injured hundreds of thousands more. I find it very difficult to even comprehend the scope of the disasters, which includes of course the ensuing accident at the Fukushima Daiji nuclear plant. Residents of the Tohoku, that Northeastern region, continue to deal with the aftereffects. Pilvi you conducted fieldwork in one such affected area, the town of Yamamoto and Miyagi prefecture, can you first introduce us to the town of Yamamoto and tell us how you came to study it?

Pilvi Posio (00:01:28)

Yes indeed, the 3/11 disaster was a rather drastic event, even when followed afar, and I remember really vividly following, especially the Fukushima nuclear accident live in local news here in Finland as well and the unraveling of the destruction after the big tsunami that covered Tohoku coast. And as the events developed, the most kind of heightened interest was directed to the nuclear accident and the aftermath. So I started to wonder, what was the state of the recovery in the tsunami area and for the my PhD thesis I started to look on the recovery of these areas in Tohoku, first online and then I came across with this small rural town in the Southern border of Miyagi prefecture, Yamamoto town. And it had, at the time of disaster, some 16700 inhabitants and when the tsunami struck the city, the small town, it indiaded like 37% of the area and drastically altered the landscape by destroying the coastal area and some five thousand buildings and also wiped away the Japan railway's Joban line that connected the town to the prefectural capital of Sendai. But the most dramatic effect of course was that 635 residents lost their lives and of course loss of relatives, friends and places of importance, this tsunami came to affect almost all inhabitants in this town. And as a rural town, Yamamoto was also affected, already before the disaster by rural decline, that is endemic to Japanese rural localities as depopulation and aging of the population and decreasing of public services for example. And the tsunami and the following recovery actually accelerated this development and Yamamoto now has some 11700 residents, some 5000 less than at the time of the disaster and to add up to problem, the population of the town is now the third oldest in Miyagi prefecture. In terms of disaster research, the most of the interest is directed towards immediate recovery period and this sort of long-term disaster recovery is relatively less studied. So I set up to do an ethnographic fieldwork in Yamamoto for approximately 4 years after the disaster in 2014-15 and this was the period when the Yamamoto reconstruction policy was turning from the immediate restoration period fukkyū from this sort of development-oriented reconstruction of fukkō and the town aimed at securing the viable future for its residents through several kinds of mostly infrastructural building projects and this sort of really future-oriented development and reconstruction.

Satoko Naito (00:04:27)

Right so around 4 years following the disaster, there was a national shift in focusing from restoration to a development-oriented reconstruction is that right?

Pilvi Posio (00:04:39)

Yes, indeed.

Satoko Naito (00:04:41)

And in Yamamoto, you encountered several residents who were unhappy with government-led reconstruction and development initiatives, can you speak about this?

Pilvi Posio (00:04:53)

Yes, this trend was present not only in Yamamoto but also elsewhere in Tohoku where the reconstruction has been criticized as this sort of a one size fits all top-down process due to the national reconstruction funding scheme that directed the prioritization towards a large-scale building projects. Many of you have heard the building of this sort of a Great Japan Sea Wall on the coast of Tohoku and other projects that were emphasized was Great Land Adjustment projects and of course residential relocation inland from the coast, from the tsunami risk and these projects were based mainly on tsunami risk calculations and simulations. And also in Yamamoto, the reconstruction focused mainly on relocation projects in which the city prioritized the building of three new residential areas that were built based on this sort of urban development ideals of compact cities, that were walkable and livable areas that had all the services in them and they were also aimed to increase the attraction of the town. To support this relocation, the town divided the coast inniated areas into three disaster hazard zones, of which the first, right at the coast, was named as the most dangerous place to live in the town and rebuilding on that particular area is forbidden forever basically. So this kind of drastically shaped, both remaining coastal areas or the residential communities in them and also the rebuilding of these relocated coastal communities, because it also forbid returning to this pre-disaster communities at the coast. And everybody was expected to participate to share this town reconstruction plan vision, and this was reflected also on national level when Kizuna, the bonds between the people and the community spirit basically was kind of celebrated as a leading force behind the social recovery that was actually to be realized by the locals themselves through their interactions and activities. But this kind of really ambitious building projects actually ended up delaying the reconstruction and many locals spent prolonged periods in temporary housings that were actually initially planned for only for a couple of years, and this created what is called as reconstruction paradox, like the bigger the building projects were the more it accelerated actually the depopulation and aging. So basically although reconstruction aimed at creating this sort of safe town for everybody and increasing the viability of the town, many locals actually felt that they were both ignored in this process, and due to the accelerated decline of the town, local reconstruction was criticized in creating what is called reconstruction disaster in which the initial disaster or the devastation was not as, well obviously it was really drastic and dramatic, but it was also strengthened or even its impact was increased by these reconstruction policies that were obviously politically oriented. And for many of the locals that I met during my fieldwork, the safety or the feeling of security was not constituted by merely of calculation of tsunami risk or the safety was not build or made up merely by relocating away from the coast. Of course it played a role but losing for example the pre-disaster social bonds and communities and the familiar living environment was considered to be a bigger threat for one's recovery than the tsunami that was characterized being once in a thousand year event. So basically this reconstruction created not only safety and unity and community within Yamamoto town, but also divisions and criticism and new conceptualizations of safety and community. For example in Yamamoto, what was really prevalent was the division between Hama, the coast, and Yama, the mountainside that was not affected by tsunami, and while the pre-disaster ideas of community were mainly based on administrational districts, the tsunami experience kind of contributed to this creation of the renewed idea of coastal community, many of the residents of which were heavily critical towards the chosen reconstruction policies of the town. This sort of a acknowledgement of new and emerging communities within the disaster context and along the reconstruction reflects also the criticism that is given to the concept of resilience that has emerged as a buzzword in both disaster research and also disaster management policies and practices, because the concept assumes that community is somehow static and based on this sort of a rather rigid territorial definitions and the notion of community in this framework emphasize also this sort of a positive sense of belonging and neighborliness and the community capacity to resist disasters or recover from them more efficiently. So, this capacity building of local communities to bounce back from the crisis is also criticized for over-emphasizing the local responsibility in this recovery and it is argued to divert attention from actual structural or political problems of the local localities recovering and maybe be in need of help also.

Satoko Naito (00:10:53)

In contrast to these top-down rebuilding initiatives that were really imposed from the outside, I understand that there were many smaller scale individual kind of community building events. You said that unlike many smaller rural communities there was no Machizukuri or town building initiatives before the disaster, did I remember that correctly?

Pilvi Posio (00:11:18)

Yes especially in Yamamoto the kind of formal Machizukuri that is the community building framework, it didn't exist and after the disaster as I said the agency for the social recovery was posited for the locals themselves. So this sort of a officially directed community-building did not reach for example the coastal area, but it focused on this sort of new prioritized areas that also created quite a lot of criticism from the tsunami affected areas. Kind of my interests were directed into this sort of a everyday making of community, because community is not something that is, is not made only in this sort of official community building in this official contexts, but also in these everyday activities that were also existing before the disaster but now after the disaster, activities such as exercise groups, Nordic walking groups; I went around the town Nordic walking with the local participants and they actually told me about the resignification of this sort of a activities that they now felt that was contributing also to the community building. Before the disaster they were mainly for the maintenance of health and this sort of a objectives of being for the elderly people being active and building up their physical wellbeing but now in the recovery period they actually had turned into this sort of forms of laughter and discussions so they had a new significance for the participants and this sort of a gradual resignification of even the everyday activities such as cooking together in for example local ladies lunch meetings or soba noodle workshops became to be main interests of my research when in field.

Satoko Naito (00:13:14)

You have already mentioned some problems with conventional ideas regarding community. Can you expand on the issues with how so-called 'communities' are often conceptualized?

Pilvi Posio (00:13:26)

When I familiarized myself with the scholarly debates on the concept, community as a concept not as an experience but as a concept it has been kind of long debated and also there are several efforts of defining it in the field of anthropology and other social science disciplines and it has become to be characterized, nowadays we all are familiar I think with the works of Benedict Anderson's imagined communities and also this sort of notions of symbolic communities or boundaries, symbolic boundaries constituting communities. And also community has been not only abstracted this sort of a categorical identities, or symbolic belonging but it is also located strongly in this sort of individual subjective experience of belonging. But this sort of approach to community has been criticized also recently as actually the notion of community has a really strong actuality, for example in the context of reconstruction and reconstruction policies as I noted, community seems to be really concrete unit of reconstruction for example and policies are directed in its rebuilding. So there are several claims that this sort of actuality and the really concrete effects and experience of community needs to be somehow also connected with this overtly emphasized abstraction of the notion of community, and this led me to follow in the footsteps of Vered Amit who has argued that community is not only about definitions or you don't even have to define community to study it, but the notion of community will work best as an analytical frame that addresses this sort of processual formation of different forms of sociality in their really multiple diverse situational or ambiguous or even conflicting forms and these sort of how people connect, how they interact, how they become to be connected or even really situationally or form really permanent ideas of their communities. So this process or how this notion of communities interpreted or how it is experienced and even felt became to be kind of main focus of my research in the field and as the subtitle of my thesis says, my focus turned towards the communities of reconstruction so what sort of overlapping and multiple forms of social connectedness became to be formed in this reconstruction period.

Satoko Naito (00:16:16)

Can you discuss this notion of an aspired community or communities?

Pilvi Posio (00:16:21)

Yes well, one thing is that for example, the futural aspect of social life while it seems to be quite selfevident part of our lives, the dreaming and hoping and this sort of aspiring towards the future. It has nevertheless been less studied and many studies on for example communities but also on disaster recovery and community recovery have focused on memories, shared memories, kind of collective experiences of the disaster or in past and how these constitute an essential aspect of the community. And actually when I started to study that Tohoku and encountered Yamamoto as a locality, my first finding in the city or my initial plan was to focus on this sort of a photograph salvation project called Omoide sarubēji that is the kind of memory salvage project, that help to clean the photographs that washed away by the tsunami. This sort of activities took place also elsewhere in Tohoku but in the field I kind of realized how much this sort of process of recovery and community-building was not only about shared memories, not only about recovering those photographs as the objectives of the past and the lost community and lost lives. But it was mostly directed or the future was really an essential part of how people realize their recovery and a sought to connect with other people. And basically the future component of this social life became really evident and also the ambiguous and conflicting part of it became really evident in this sort of criticism towards the reconstruction because many of the locals at the coastal sites, who felt that they were ignored in the reconstruction project, they essentially felt that they were being left out from the future that the reconstructed town was creating. So there was this sort of discrepancy between these futures that were envisioned and enacted in reconstruction and this sort of a anticipation for example is largely a kind of future orientation that is now characterizing also the contemporary disaster management based on this constant renewal of future threats and avoiding them through this sort of a anticipatory action. And also many studies starting from Mary Douglas have claimed that social lives are essentially characterized or structured by this sort of shared threats or risks and anticipation amidst uncertain futures. So I suggest in my study or the research that we need to refocus from this sort of a anticipatory threats and uncertain futures to towards more desired futures and how people navigate towards this sort of desired futures that would help us to actually understand better maybe how people connect and how social life is formed or community experience is constituted as a process.

Satoko Naito (00:19:30)

So what were some concrete examples that you witnessed of Yamamoto residents refocusing on the future while of course not forgetting the past but looking more towards the future in your opinion?

Pilvi Posio (00:19:44)

Yes as I said, my kind of argument relies on reconfiguration of understanding community and also recovery in terms of how the orientation towards the future, towards enacting and envisioning shared desired futures is manifesting in the present activities and also shapes the reinterpretation of the past. So it is not only about shared memories or reconnecting with the past but the recovery relied mostly, as I saw it, in this sort of a futural acting and envisioning and also emotions related on that so for example when I visited and interviewed people associated with the coastal shrine on the Yamamoto area that was re-erected based on the request of the locals of that particular residential areas and the locals saw this rebuilding of the shrine as an opportunity to revisit and reconnect with their lost community and this sort of feelings and emotions that it represented and the shrine also held for example community festivals as a way to reconnect the people from that area. But however, I saw that sort of shrine visiting practice not only as re-enactment of the actually the passed communities, but it was actually this sort of a envisioning and enacting of rebuilt nostalgically perceived community also in the future. It was activity directed towards the future so this is an aspect that I would like to include also to the understanding of community recovery and its future oriented dimension.

Satoko Naito (00:21:35)

In your research, you discuss the government-funded, large-scale, rebuilding efforts that sought not only to reconstruct the affected areas in Tohoku but also to simultaneously revitalize the whole of Japan, especially economically. As you say, this also relates to an aspiration towards a national Japanese community; can you speak about this?

Pilvi Posio (00:22:00)

Yes I think this sort of a focus on various kinds of collective aspirations on multiple levels, both local and national, and perceiving how they are interconnected and shape each other kind of through these webs of various social practices such as reconstruction practices or local rural revitalization practices helps us to understand how the Tohoku region is both at the center and the margins of the post-disaster aspired Japanese community. Because historically Tohoku region has been regarded as this sort of a backward, peripheral rural area, both socially and politically and it has been kind of used to fulfill the center's need for resources and provider of the food and work forces as well, center being Tokyo area here. And of course it has been continuously characterized by the rural decline as I said, the population aging, decreases in services and young people moving to the capital area for example in search of jobs. But it's interesting also to see how rural areas in Japan are carrying also this sort of association with the idea of Furusato, the hometown, as this nostalgic home for all things Japanese and this Japaneseness of this idealized essentialized idyllic rural area that is also appealed in many rural revitalization practices that rely on for the localities to build on their rural characteristics and appeal as this sort of Furusato for all Japanese. But like the post 3/11 political rhetoric and the reconstruction rhetoric relied on both of these notions of rurality and backwardness, when it kind of combined this idea of rebirth of Tohoku area to the rebirth of Japanese nation and this made the Tohoku area as this sort of flagship of the aspirations of prosperous new Japan that would rise from this sort of economic downturn that had characterized the nation's economy since the 1990s recession and reconstruction was hoped to tackle the overall problems and threats of depopulation and aging while at the same time the well-mannered behavior for example of the Tohoku residents after the disaster were celebrated to represent the Japaneseness and showing the community spirit and represent the essentialized Japaneseness. So Tohoku was both a threat for the national community as this sort of declining rural area is a problem that needed to be solved through this sort of a ambitious reconstruction plans, but then again it was also an opportunity to both concretely and economically to boost economy and then again to solve this sort of a population decline through this positive approach to the region. So in a way, we sort of traverse now the full circle from the local criticism and the locally lived reconstruction and the local policies to this sort of a national aspirations that actually quite much directed the selection of these local reconstruction policies and practices so because the aspiration of economic prosperous new rise of Japan was to be realized through this sort of large scale investments that served to boost economy as I said, and it kind of I think illustrates how this overlapping and mutually constituted national and local aspirations or ways to aspiring are and they shape each other and this also reveals how the politized nature of aspiring, in my opinion, is not about this sort of nice and not the community nor the aspiring is not only about positive aligning of future but as said, these ways of reaching the desired future that can be even conflicting and basically power is about making other people to act for the futures that you wish to realize. And I think reconstruction context kind of illustrates this dynamic very vividly, criticism may even have really concrete effects for example on national level the Democratic party of Japan actually lost its power partly due to the criticism towards the chosen reconstruction policies after the disaster but also locally in Yamamoto this sort of criticism towards the reconstruction manifested also as a change of mayor last April, the April 2022, one of the most critical coastal residents was elected as the new mayor of Yamamoto. So its community nor aspirations are not merely positive sense of belonging but they are also embedded very much in power relations.

Satoko Naito (00:27:02)

Of course the power of the national government mostly and funding that it can provide, I am sure, limits the authority of the mayor but I hope that this means that criticism voiced by the majority of the residents can be taken into account. Finally, how do you envision your concept of aspired communities to be useful outside of the immediate disaster recovery contexts?

Pilvi Posio (00:27:30)

Yes, as I said the focus is mostly on communities as a process and how people orient towards the future and how are wanting together, or having the future in the first place, shapes our present social lives for example and the experience of it. And well returning to disaster recovery, I think the significance of having a sense of future is quite essential, having this sort of future or feeling that we are actually going towards something or having the future because for example Yamamoto many who felt that, even four years after the disaster, they felt that the future had become dark, they didn't have any future prospects, anything to wait for example, and that kind of resonated with my experience because I wrote the majority of this thesis during the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns and this sort of really at the time of really uncertain future. Nobody knew where things were going and what would happen, I don't know tomorrow or a year later. So everything was blurry and uncertain in terms of future, so I think what actually connected the people was not the uncertainty but when the kind of situation opened up a little bit, people started to plan together the future, the planning for the meeting next week or events or anything, the future kind of reopened for people so that also enabled them to actually connect or reconnect. And also another aspect, well having a future like the crisis that we are now living, not only the COVID pandemic but also like in terms of the climate crisis I think anticipating the future effects of the climate crisis and preparing for that creates this sort of a renewed sense of crisis for us or the danger and the threats of future, the uncertainty, so also in that contexts like quite generally it is necessary to see both how people orient towards the future, what they want from the future, but then again how for example this sort of wanting a sustainable future, which is quite aspirational goal and quite universal, one can hardly contests this sort of idea of sustainable future. But I think that my experience for example in Yamamoto that sought to establish security for all kind of helped me acknowledge also in detail how these aspirational sustainable futures also manifest in the lived reality and as a lived, well let's say the green transition for example so it kind of gave me tools to start, not questioning but the seeing this sort of really diverse and multifocal construction of these aspired futures.

Satoko Naito (00:30:30)

I think your idea of collective aspiring, which is proactive and socially conscious, group-oriented and hopeful, has potential for wide applications so thank you so much for sharing your ideas, insights and your research with us today.

Pilvi Posio (00:30:49)

Thank you for the discussion.

Satoko Naito (00:30:51)

Thank you. I can only imagine that this is a very difficult time of year for you, for all the residents of Yamamoto and other areas affected and I just hope that they can continue to have some sort of optimism for the collective future and even a sense of security in the present. Thank you so much Pilvi.

Pilvi Posio (00:31:10)

Thank you.

Satoko Naito (00:31:11)

And to our listeners, thank you for joining the Nordic Asia podcast showcasing Nordic collaboration and studying Asia.

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