The Future of "Fukushima Future"

Abstract

This paper explores discourses of the future that emerged in Fukushima, Japan, after the 2011 nuclear meltdown. The future is everywhere in post-disaster Fukushima. That does not mean that Fukushima necessarily has the positive future so often depicted in such discourses, nor does it mean that it has no future at all. But the symbolized futurity is vivid in the broken landscape. More precisely, the future itself appears everywhere as a major keyword in disaster reconstruction projects. Often supported by the government's disaster reconstruction budgets, many infrastructural and institutional projects—such as public schools, research centers, recovery funds, NPOs, alternative energy projects, and so forth—are now named after the future. Among these various "futures" that have emerged in post-disaster Fukushima, this paper focuses on a floating offshore wind turbine named "Fukushima Future."

In recent years, a number of anthropologists have emphasized the need to make the future itself the object of study. Thanks to their contributions, the anthropological tradition seems to be changing, with many scholars engaged in intriguing ethnographic research about the future. Such studies includes research on finance, religion, development, and also the Anthropocene. In fact, as they demonstrate, the future has been omnipresent, and its different forms are frequently reproduced within the framework of "futurism."

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