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Handbook of Disaster Studies in Japan
Aoi Horiuchi, Senior Advocacy Officer, Japan NGO Center for International Cooperation (JANIC), has contributed a chapter for “Handbook of Disaster Studies in Japan“, edited by Paola Cavaliere and Junko Otani, which is published in September 2025 by MHM Limited.
This volume is a critical interrogation of the concept, meaning and experience of disaster in 21st-century Japan. Throughout the chapters, a central theme and guiding theoretical perspective is the recognition of the human element in disasters. This phenomenological perspective shapes our analysis of such occurrences as junctures where hazards intersect with multi-level governance, political preparedness, individual responses, and the contextual social, cultural, structural, environmental, and transnational dynamics within affected populations. The volume also addresses the mediation of disaster in public culture as a measure of the human capacity to contain disasters through an exercise of disambiguation and framing that reveals the social construction of the event. The evolution of disaster studies in Japan over the past three decades—and the contextual disaster policy changes and societal processes—shows that the empirical terrain for studying disasters is changing. These shifts animate the high interest in the sociology of disaster as an interdisciplinary field. This book adds to critical disaster studies scholarship by addressing the mediation of disaster in public culture as a measure of the human capacity to contain disasters through an exercise of interpreting and framing that reveals the social construction of the event. The diverse background of contributors—from junior to well-established scholars, independent researchers, NPO and NGO activists, and artists— provides a pool of international and Japanese researchers living in Japan and overseas well-equipped to produce both comprehensive and specialized perspectives to the field.
This book can also be purchased through the link.
https://www.routledge.com/Handbook-of-Disaster-Studies-in-Japan/Cavaliere-Otani/p/book/9789048562275