Changing concepts of disaster and disaster  prevention in 20th-century Japan

TSUCHIDA Hiroshige

doi:10.24471/shigaku.127.6_6

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Japan’s defeat in World War II (1945) and the enactment of the Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures in 1961 were the epoch-making events that led to changes in the concepts of disaster and disaster prevention in modern and contemporary Japan. Based on the lessons learned from the Great Kanto Earthquake, measures were initiated to deal with such emergencies as large-scale natural disasters and aerial attacks. <br> As Japan entered its era of militarism and war preparation in the 1930s, air defense was becoming more important than natural disaster prevention, until the Showa Sanriku Earthquake and Tsunami hit the Pacific coast of the Tohoku region in 1933, and the Muroto Typhoon devastated Western Japan the following year, turning policymakers’ attention back to the latter, as shown by the appearance of the term “bosai” 防災(disaster prevention) alongside “boku” 防空 (air defense) in such legislation as the Air Defense Law of 1937 and the 1939 Imperial Ordinance on the Organization of Meteorological Agencies. Nevertheless, as the risks of aerial attacks became more and more apparent during the early 1940’s, the highest priority was shifted back to air defense.<br> Though air defense was completely deemphasized immediately after Japan’s defeat in the World War II and during the Allied Occupation, rearmament and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 made it a prominent issue once again in disaster prevention; but it did not develop due to public skepticism about its effectiveness, given the fresh memories of the failure to prevent the huge loss of life caused by the Allied aerial bombings of civilian populations during the War. <br> It was from around the time of Japan’s defeat that large-scale earthquakes and typhoons began to frequently hit the Archipelago, as the devastation wreaked by the Isewan Typhoon of 1959 led to the eventual enactment of the Basic Act on Disaster Control Measures in 1961. The mid-1950s marked not only postwar recovery and take-off into rapid economic growth, but also several natural disasters, large-scale maritime accidents and industrial explosions. It was around that same time that measures were initiated to deal with nuclear disasters, as nuclear energy plants began to be constructed. All of these developments were reflected in the definition of “disaster” written into the 1961 Basic Act, in much the same way as the destructive events of previous decades determined disaster prevention policy decisions and legislation in their aftermaths.

Changing concepts of disaster and disaster prevention in 20th-century Japan

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