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Reviewed by:
  • Lessons from Fukushima: Japanese Case Studies on Science, Technology and Society ed. by Yuko Fujigaki
  • Yasuhito Abe (bio)
Yuko Fujigaki, ed., Lessons from Fukushima: Japanese Case Studies on Science, Technology and Society
Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2015. 242pp. $129.00.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, the resulting tsunami, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011, scholars from diverse disciplines, including STS, have engaged in discussions of why the nuclear disaster came about in the way it did. Some scholars have sought to understand the nuclear disaster from historical perspectives; others have focused on the role of the media in shaping the Fukushima Daiichi disaster as a disaster of communication from the perspectives of media and communication studies. That scholars from different fields have become involved in the debates over Fukushima could be seen as evidence that various perspectives will be required if we are to learn as many lessons as possible from the event. Whereas a great deal of scholarship has contributed to a better understanding of the Fukushima disaster, virtually absent in the English-language literature are Japanese scholars’ analytical perspectives. Editor Yuko Fujigaki, a leading Japanese STS scholar, ably bridges that gap with this collection of research articles, which, for those who may not be familiar with STS scholarship in Japan, attests to the acute awareness of Fukushima among leading Japanese academics.

In the preface, Fujigaki clearly states the book’s focus through three important questions: “How are the nuclear power plants embedded in political, economic and social contexts in Japan? Under what kinds of relationships between science, technology and society are such accidents produced? In addition, how are these relationships constructed historically? This book provides a case analysis on the Triple Disaster (i.e., earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plants) to address the first two questions and also provides analysis on Minamata disease (mercury pollution) and Itai-Itai disease (cadmium pollution) to examine the last question” (xi). In the introduction, Fujigaki further summarizes the content of each chapter and sets out three characteristics of the relationships between science, technology, and society in Japan from historical perspectives, with a particular focus on the issue of nuclear power: [End Page 277] “(1) There existed a ‘precautionary principle’ in the 1970s in the case of environmental issues; however, in the field of nuclear power plants, this principle did not work. (2) From the observation of administrative lawsuits, several experts pointed to the lack of public engagement in the administrative process in the initial approval of the construction of the plants. These points, which came to light after the controversy in the administrative lawsuit, were not utilized for nuclear power safety discussion after the lawsuit. (3) New relationships between science, technology, and society are now being constructed in the fields of new technology, e.g., information technology; however, this has had little effect on the historically rigidly constructed relationships among these spheres in nuclear power energy” (3). This book, then, provides useful and comprehensive overviews of Japanese scholarship on the Fukushima disaster and on other STS-related events in Japanese society.

Part 1 examines various aspects of the Fukushima disaster from different perspectives. In chapter 2, Fujigaki analyzes the political, economic, social, and historical contexts in which the disaster took place and developed, providing a backdrop for the rest of the case studies. She outlines the history of nuclear power in Japan, tracing its origins back to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and conducts a discourse analysis of three different investigative reports on Fukushima, showing the weakness of Japan’s risk governance. Fujigaki also analyzes Fukushima as a “communication disaster” by paying critical attention to the issue of communication between experts and citizens, and she further discusses one view of Fukushima as a disaster that was “made in Japan.”

In chapter 3, Mikihito Tanaka describes how the Science Media Centre of Japan (SMCJ) created a communication space between scientists and journalists in order to deal with the disaster. While the credibility of the Japanese mass media slumped after the event, the SMCJ took full advantage of social media (Twitter in particular) and played a significant role in bridging the...

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