“Fukkō” (“Reconstruction”) as a Misnomer in Municipal Employees’ Narratives

DOI

Bibliographic Information

Other Title
  • 自治体職員の語りにみる「復興」という名辞のミスノマー
  • 福島第一原発事故後の被災地自治体
  • A Disaster-Affected Municipality after the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Published
2026
DOI
  • 10.24525/jaqp.25.1_112
Publisher
Japanese Association of Qualitative Psychology

Description

This study examines the misnomer of the Japanese term “fukkō” (reconstruction) by conducting a secondary analysis of employees’ narratives from a municipality affected by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. In everyday and policy discourse, “fukkō” often implies a restoration of the town to its pre-disaster state, even though population structures, livelihoods, and administrative functions have irreversibly changed. We analysed verbatim transcripts from semi-structured interviews with eight municipal employees in an evacuation-designated town (four hired before and four after the disaster) using open coding, and integrated the labels related to the town and reconstruction into a model to reveal how people perceive and engage with “fukkō.” The model comprised three stages: “hopes for the old town and the altered present,” “difficulties in reviving the town,” and “accepting incompleteness while moving forward.” The findings show how employees simultaneously maintained a desire for restoration and, faced with uncontrollable change, gradually revised their goals toward feasible reconfiguration. The study suggests that as long as “fukkō” evokes restoration, reconstruction policies and evaluation indicators should explicitly frame reconstruction as reconfiguration with concrete objectives.

Journal

Details 詳細情報について

  • CRID
    1390026271644964352
  • DOI
    10.24525/jaqp.25.1_112
  • ISSN
    24357065
  • Text Lang
    ja
  • Data Source
    • JaLC
  • Abstract License Flag
    Disallowed

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