Disasters and Social Crisis in Contemporary Japan ─ Political, Religious, and Sociocultural Responses

Japan is still coming to terms with the 'triple disaster' of 2011 – earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Only two decades ago, the country was similarly shaken by the 'double disaster' of earthquake and sarin gas attack in 1995. What can we learn about Japan through the diverse responses to these two critical moments in postwar history when a 'normal' sense of stability and existing social order was severely undermined? This edited collection brings together a multidisciplinary team of scholars to engage this question and explore the wide-ranging and diverse responses by national and local governments, political leaders, citizen activists, concerned mothers, religious organizations, literary figures, and public intellectuals.

Mark R. Mullins is Professor of Japanese Studies and Director of the Japan Studies Centre in the New Zealand Asia Institute, The University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author and co-editor of a number of works, including Religion and Society in Modern Japan (with S. Shimazono, P.L. Swanson, 1993), Christianity Made in Japan (1998), and Religion and Social Crisis in Japan (with R.J. Kisala, 2001).
Koichi Nakano is Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Graduate Program in Global Studies, Sophia University, Japan. His publications in English include Party Politics and Decentralization in Japan and France: When the Opposition Governs (2010) and several articles in The Journal of Japanese Studies, Asian Survey, and The Pacific Review.