| Project category | CTR Research Project Support Program |
| Project title | Living with Fukushima’s “contaminated” sea: Life, leisure and tourism in the wake of disaster |
| Research Unit | Sustainability, Sports |
| Primary investigator | Adam Doering |
| Co investigators | Hideki Okumoto (Professor, Fukushima University, Japan）, Matt Westcott (Award-winning Canadian action sport filmmaker） |
| Project period | 2018/5/1～2019/3/31 |
| Project summary | Introduction; The coastal Hamadōri region of Fukushima is located along the Pacific Ocean. The region has a rich maritime heritage and is also home to one of Japan’s oldest surf cultures. Despite the close relationship between Fukushima communities and the sea, official Josen (decontamination) efforts focused primarily on collecting and removing 5 cm of top soils around residential areas. Coastal revitalisation efforts have centred on fishery resource management and recovery, and the construction of 7 to 15-meter concrete seawalls intended to protect communities from potential future tsunami. The community’s historical, cultural, and spiritual connection with the sea is a secondary concern, if considered at all. The construction of seawalls epitomise a technocratic and top-down approach to “reconstruction” and a utilitarian drive for observable solutions and outcomes. This utilitarian approach to responding to disaster effected areas has come under critique by Naomi Klein (2007) who suggests pragmatist recovery approaches are a form of “disaster capitalism” where money is made and circulated, which for philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy (2015) is the true “disaster” of the Fukushima’s recovery efforts. I argue that this utilitarian recovery model denies the invaluable sense, histories and traditional knowledges of Fukushima’s coastal communities. While Kato’s (2017) work has contributed greatly to our understandings of spiritual recovery in post-disaster Fukushima on land, considerations of how Fukushima coastal communities are living with the contaminated sea—spiritually, emotionally, aesthetically, and creatively—are limited (Sakurai et al., 2017; Sato, et al., 2013). Guiding research questions; This research will address the following questions and concerns: How does life go on in disaster affected areas? How do coastal leisure communities reengage with post-disaster “contaminated” seascapes? How do people forge new ways of welling and belonging within, amongst and against altered coastlines? What kinds of embodied, sensory and technological assemblages comprise new practices of living with a polluted sea? How does tourism development function in post-disaster polluted seascapes? To engage with such complex questions the study will comprise a multidisciplinary effort to document the sounds, stories, words, and images through film and writing in effort to express what life and leisure is like for those who continue to engage with a “contaminated” sea. The objective is two-fold: 1) To document how local and visitor surfers deliberate, experience and (re)engage with Fukushima’s altered seascape through leisure; and 2) To actively aid in reconstructing Fukushima’s connection with the sea by expressing the unique surfscape of Fukushima’s coastline through the production of a short Fukushima surf-film. Theoretical perspective/Methodology; Methodologically, the study is inspired by Donna Haraway (2016), Anna Tsing (2015), Rosalyn Diprose (2011), and the eco-humanities more generally (Gibson, Rose, & Fincher, 2015) who argue the current crises facing the world today calls for new ways of thinking and producing knowledge. As Haraway (2016, p. 10) writes, in such urgent times “many of us are tempted to address the trouble in terms of making an imagined future safe, of stopping something from happening that looms in the future” (Haraway, 2016, p. 1). Picture the 15-meter seawall here. Instead of constructing walls, Gibson, Rose and Fincher (2015) state their “collective inclination has been to go on in an experimental and exploratory mode, in which we refuse to foreclose on options or to jump too quickly to ‘solutions.’” Learning how to mourn, feel and receive loss, learning how to live with an immanently “contaminated” earth and with one another, may be more conducive to the kind of thought and action that would provide the means to building more liveable futures (Haraway, 2016). It becomes increasingly necessary to think through “more modest possibilities of partial recuperation and getting on together” (Haraway, 2016, p.10). Picking up on this philosophical thread, this study explores the newly assembled engagements with the sea already underway through the situated leisure practice of surfing along Fukushima’s “contaminated” coastline.To give texture to the experience of living with a “contaminated” sea ethnographic fieldwork will draw on in-depth interviews and participant observation with Fukushima surfers as well as recording the sounds and images at Fukushima’s surf destinations. Through the use of creative cinematography the visual narrative of the film aims to express the ongoing sense of living with the sea that is at times lost in the wave of political and scientific documentary representations of Fukushima’s seascape. This relationship provides the undercurrents that keep life moving forward in the wake of disaster. |
Activity reports
Publications and presentations outcomes
During the 12-month funding period material from this CTR funded research was presented internationally and domestically.
International outcomes included presenting this study at one of the leading social anthropology international conferences at the University of Oxford, UK. Another early outcome of the project included contributing visual material from the Fukushima fieldwork at “A Toxic Love Affair” exhibition at Newcastle University, UK.
Domestic outcomes included presenting at Wakayama University’s Center for Tourism Research Seminar Series and being an invited guest lecture at Fukushima University. The funding was also used to develop an application in collaboration with Fukushima University for the Kiban kenkyū (C ) KAKENHI.
Data collection
The three phases of fieldwork for this project generated over 25 hours of recorded interviews and many hours of ethnographic audio-visual material. The ethnographic interviews and audio-visual materials are currently being transcribed and translated and are being analyzed, edited, and developed into a series of short videos designed to be shown in Fukushima in 2019. Two drafts of the audio-visual material have already been shown in the international conference presentations and have also been shown to the research participants in Fukushima in an effort to receive feedback for further development of the ethnographic material.
Expected future outcomes (2019) and alterations
Once this rich ethnographic material has been analyzed the results will be written into a peer-reviewed international research article with the aim of submitting to the Journal of Sustainable Tourism (JOST) in 2019. One change to the initial project plan is that the production and dissemination of the audio-visual material has changed. The amount of time and funding available was not enough to make a full length documentary within the one-year time frame. Alterations will be made to the initial project plan by finding new outlets for disseminating the short research videos. The editing process of the audio-visual material has been taken-up by the lead researcher, which will take more time than the initial plan accounted for.
Publications
Doering, A., Evers, C., & Davoll, J. (2018). Life and polluted leisure in the wake of disaster: Living with Fukushima’s “polluted” sea. Paper presented at the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) of the UK and Commonwealth Conference. ASA18 Sociality, Matter, and the Imagination: Re-creating Anthropology. University of Oxford, UK, September 18-21.
Doering, A. (2018). “Entanglements”. Photographic essay for A Toxic Love Affair: Polluted Leisure in ‘Blue Spaces’. Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University Institute for Creative Arts Practice, Newcastle, UK (curated by Clifton Evers and James Davoll). September 21st – October 6th.
Doering, A. (2019). Surfing “contaminated” seas: Life and polluted leisure in the wake of Fukushima’s triple-disaster. Public Seminar presented at the Center for Tourism Research Seminar Series: Tourism and SDGs - Vol.10, Wakayama University, Japan. January 24th
Doering, A. (2018). Invited guest lecture. Surf tourism development in Japan. Faculty of Economics. Fukushima University, Fukushima City, Japan. July 13th.
Doering, A. & Okumoto, H. (2019). Lifestyle sports, post-disaster tourism and sustainable seas: Exploring the potential of surfing and surf tourism for post-disaster coastline recovery and resilience. Application for Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research - Kiban kenkyū (C ) KAKENHI.
