Tohoku in the History of Japanese Modern State-building: Beyond the Periods of Militarism and High-Economic-Growth

Abstract

This essay is intended both to examine the history of Tohoku in Japan’s modern state-building process and to sketch what paths the ongoing Tohoku region reconstruction process should not follow. When Japan started modernization, Tohoku was a defeated area, known as the home of the disloyal rebels following the internal Boshin War after the Meiji Restoration. The intellectual class was almost eliminated, and few public projects were introduced by the central government. People in Tohoku suffered from the central government’s lack of interest in the region. The government in Tokyo was dominated by those from South-Western Japan, who introduced national development policies more or less targeting Kanto or Western parts of Japan. It was the particular breed of totalitarian nationalism shortly before or WWII that brought the attention of policy-makers in Tokyo to Tohoku. During the period of high economic growth after Japan lost overseas territories as a result of WWII, Tohoku became a supply base both of natural and human resources. The development of Tohoku was, historically speaking, a product of pre-war and mid-war Japanese nationalism. The nuclear power plants in Fukushima Prefecture were all products of the strategy for survival of those in “backward” areas. As the Japan of totalitarian militarism or high economic growth no longer exists now, the position of Tohoku must also change. More local initiatives ought to be respected and encouraged. This essay examines dozens of reconstruction plans made by local towns or villages in the coastal areas of Tohoku and exposes the unnecessary influence of the central government in their creation.