Abstract
Three years have passed since the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Approximately 130,000 people have been forced to evacuate, and they now have dif culties in every aspect of their lives. These people face challenges with regard to helping displaced family members, finding employment, and educating their children. Meanwhile, the Japanese government concentrates on reconstruction of the damaged area.
The purpose of this paper is to describe regional and community characteristics relating to nuclear accidents and evacuees, and to clarify what regional and community studies should examine.
The paper focuses on four issues concerning Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident and evacuees. The issues are (a) to treat nuclear accidents as “disasters” is to prevent evacuees from achieving recovery and revitalization, (b) Japanese government support of a return policy for Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) works against evacuees who wish to return to their homes, thereby favouring the victimizer over the victim, (c) local governments forced to provide refuge for evacuees face a dilemma. The restricted area set up to guard evacuee residents is in crisis with relation to the local government. If the situation continues, it could become a matter of life and death. Budgetary limitations are leading to governmental favouritism toward the pro-TEPCO return policy, and evacuees cannot choose for themselves whether to return to their home towns or to migrate to other areas. Three years have passed, and evacuees are being forced into dif culties by the plan for radioactive contamination.
Based on these issues, I suggest that regional and community studies should examine (1) how local communities are to be rebuilt through future decisions made by evacuees, (2) how the government should support evacuees, and (3) how is radioactive contamination as a realized risk distributed spatially in Japanese society after nuclear accidents.
