Landscape geographies of the post-disaster Tohoku coastline

Existing literature in Human Geography has drawn attention to the importance of landscape as a concept that can help reveal the cultural and political dimensions of disasters and post-disaster societies alike. In particular, geographers have explored the political structures and inequalities that render particular groups vulnerable to natural hazards, but also the cultural and therapeutic role of relocation and place-making processes for the collective well-being of those displaced by disasters. This chapter aims to demonstrate the utility of geographical perspectives for understanding and analysing post-disaster societies, particularly those subjected to relocation processes, by discussing and analysing several landscapes that are characteristic of the Tohoku coastline in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami disaster. Following a brief review of relevant literature and proceeding in conversation with a series of landscape photographs taken by the author on a recent field visit to Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures, the chapter first examines the coastal landscape of Tohoku as a symbol on which the disaster management approaches and broader cultural and political values of residents, government and industry are made visible and contested. The chapter then turns to the memorial site of Rikuzentakata, to apply geographical theories of landscape as an embodied practice as a means of gaining insight into the cultural life of a deliberately cultivated space of memory and reflection. The chapter then concludes in response to recent theoretical work in human geography and beyond by reflecting on the ongoing presence of disaster in the everyday landscape of Tohoku, both as a reminder of the uncanny experience of surviving and living alongside disastrous events and as an imperative to uncover the ongoing conditions and inequalities that transform hazards into disasters.