This dissertation tracks the effects of state recognition across a series of vanishing and emerging social worlds in post-Fukushima Japan. Based upon two years of fieldwork, the dissertation focuses on ethnographic sites at which the failure of state subjectivization activates both a reinvigoration of state discourse, and the formation of counter-discourses within the temporality of Japan’s endless “postwar” (sengo). In so doing, the dissertation seeks to disclose the social violence and iteration of shame as it is mobilized by the state to produce an obedient subject – willing to die for the nation in war – and as the failure to conform precipitates alternate socialities that may be either opposed to or complicit with state interests. The ethnographic sites of which I write concentrate on: the compulsory enactment of propriety in public school ceremonies, and the refusal by teachers to stand for, bow to the “national flag” (kokki), and sing the “national anthem” (kokka), the self-same imperial symbols under which Japan conducted World War II; a group of Okinawan construction workers in the old day laborer district of Tokyo, Sanya; the stigmatized “radical” (kageki) leftist student organization, the Zengakuren; the “internet right-wing” (netto uyoku) group, the Zaittokai, whose street protests are performed live before a camera; and “Fukushima,” where the charge of guilt has short-circuited memories of the Japanese state sacrificing its citizens during World War II. As a foil for the remaining ethnographic sites, the obviousness of giving “respect” (sonchō) to state symbols in public school ceremonies discloses the formation of subjects in a constitutive misrecognition that eliminates – or kills – difference in the enactment of social totality. A veritable stain on which the Japanese state drive to war was dependent, the singular figure of the sitting teacher formed part and parcel of what rightist politicians referred to as the “negative legacy” (fu no rekishi) of World War II. S/he constituted the object of an overcoming that – alongside the Okinawan construction worker, the “radical” (kageki) leftist, the “resident foreigner” (zainichi) as object of Zaittokai hate speech, and “Fukushima” – at once marked the ground of intensification and failure of state discourse. For the graduation ceremony of March, 2012, the official number of teachers who refused to stand and sing fell to “1” in Tokyo, where the state employs 63,000 teachers. With neither family ties, romantic involvements, nor social recognition that would confirm their masculinity, the vanishing day laborers of Sanya made all the more insistent reference to the trope of otoko or ‘man.’ Closely articulated with the mobster world of the yakuza with which many workers had connections, the repetition of masculinity in work, gambling, and fighting constituted a discourse that repulsed the shaming gaze of general society. Thus, the excessive life-style of the otoko was located at the constitutive margins of the social bond of propriety, where he also provided a dying reserve army of labor that could be mobilized to undertake the most undesirable tasks, such as work at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Echoing the death of Sanya, the Zengakuren numbered in the tens of thousands in the 1960s and 1970s, but had dwindled to under 100 active members in 2012. While the anti-war “strike” (sutoraiki) constituted the apotheosis of the Zengakuren discourse, their espousal and shameless mandate of “violent” (bōryoku) revolution subverted the origins of the Zengakuren into a prohibitive discourse which replicated the form of state rhetoric, and demanded the eradication of the Stalinist from within their own ranks. No less shameless than the Zengakuren, the emergent hate speech of the “internet right-wing” (netto uyoku) iterated state discourse among the working poor. Having grown from 500 to 10,000 members within only four years, the Zaittokai’s notorious hate speech aspired to the instantaneous effect of “killing” (korosu) another legacy of World War II: the “resident foreigner” (zainichi). Yet, replicating online forms of writing, the iterability of their performative triggered repetition, and in a shamelessness specific to cyberspace – in which the reciprocity of the gaze and shame were lacking – the Zaittokai directed their paranoid speech at the state, whose representatives were said to be controlled by zainichi. Lastly, “Fukushima” marked the apogee of the effectivity and failures of the state in containing both the excesses of capitalism, and the “negative legacy” (fu no rekishi) of World War II, the memories of which were short-circuited by radioactive outpour.

This thesis examines the news coverage of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that devastated the country of Japan in March 2011 from a comparative standpoint. Drawing on the key concepts in the theory of social constructionism and frame analysis, the series of studies in this thesis comparatively examines how cultures and value systems factored into the process of news production, dissemination and consumption when it comes to the news stories on what the Japanese government officially named the Great East Japan Earthquake. The first section looks at how Japan and its people were portrayed amid disaster relief efforts and analyzes how culture itself has become the topic of discussion and part of reality construction. The second section, on frame analysis, focuses on the workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, often called the Fukushima 50 by the Western media, and examines the cultural characteristics that contributed to the observable discrepancies in the ways they were represented by the Japanese media and their Western counterparts. The third study aims to shed light on the environment surrounding today’s foreign correspondents and international news reporting in the context of Japan, investigating what factors influence the ways journalist go about reporting and framing their versions of realities. The fourth section attempts to deconstruct the news narratives in terms of risk communication by paying particular attention to how people reacted to the coverage of potential dangers of radiation leaks as well as the tsunami warnings in Tohoku area. In the end, the series of studies described above underlines how cultural factors significantly affected the ways in which the journalists covered Japan in 2011 as well as the ways news audiences understood what was going on. The thesis argues that there are two types of cultural faming that contributed greatly to the social construction of realities in the aftermath of the triple disasters. The first type of cultural framing was observed when reporters consistently made the culture of Japan and its supposedly “unique” values as the main frame of news narratives. It often implied that the Japanese culture was somewhat exotic or alien through foreign eyes. The second type of cultural framing was observed when the cultural dispositions of journalists and audience framed the potential risk such as the incoming tsunami and the vital newsmakers such as workers in Fukushima Daiichi using familiar cultural molds. The finding accentuated the intricacy and precarious nature of “realities” in news reports. The research also indicated that when cultural factors in news process dictate and determine the focal point of reality perception, they tend to bring about racial discussions and stereotypical images in narratives. / published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

"Representation of nuclear energy in media in the period before and after the accident in Fukushima" This master's thesis examines media representation of nuclear energy within one year before and one year after the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. The sample of news was selected from the print edition of the two main Czech dailies - MF Dnes and Právo. The method used in the thesis is content analysis. In the first part, some of the main theories of media studies (agenda setting, stereotypes, framing, and moral panic) and mechanisms which single news are constructed by (news values, access to news, primary defining, and gatekeeping) are introduced. In the second part, shift in both the focus of the media on the issue of nuclear energy and utilizing of the selected mechanisms of construction of the news is examined. In conclusion, the thesis identifies how the representation of the nuclear energy is constructed in the above said dailies over the period given before and after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

This dissertation examines how logics of financial securitization and heteropatriarchy have shaped the production of surplus populations in reconstruction policies from the TEPCO Fukushima nuclear disaster in post-2011 Japan. Through multi-sited fieldwork with nuclear subcontractors, labor organizers, anti-irradiation mothers, and state-recognized nuclear evacuees, it elucidates nuclear reconstruction and remediation efforts more broadly as projects that resecure financial and affective investments in nuclear imperialism and colonialism through the disciplining of communities exposed to radioactive fallout. Each chapter examines nuclear reconstruction through the partial construction of archetypes of positions within the geography of nuclear reconstruction. Through this method, an analysis emerges of how reconstruction policies and their justification through risk communication discourses of “harmful rumor” reproduce the conditions of the nuclear industry in Japan, disciplining the irradiated through a racialized domesticity imposed by American imperialism, the reproduction of an eco-eugenic heteropatriarchal organization of value, and through systems of labor brokerage inherited from Japanese colonial production. The form of the dissertation and its inclusion of autoethnographic reflections argues for a feminist transgender mode of anthropology that centers the fragmentation of anthropology, the ethnographer’s body, and classical constructions of “the field.” Through the use of poetry, translation, archives from workplace struggle, work from local historians and economists, American Studies, Anthropology, and Japanese Studies, it aims to normalize a way of doing anthropology that is characterized by the splitting of the voice, disruption, and ethnographic refusal.

本研究以福島核災期間的新聞報導為分析對象，透過兩階段的新聞內容分析，比較福島核災發生當月以及週年前夕的新聞報導。研究發現越接近福島核災週年，媒體關注越高；福島核災後一個月內的新聞以因應框架為主，一年後的主要框架則轉為衝突及人情趣味框架；福島核災週年的報導戲劇化程度較一年以前為高，而兩階段共同的缺點則為消息來源過於單一化。本研究檢視福島核災報導的優點及未盡之處，以提供實務上諸多參考。 / This thesis attempts to analyze the news reports of Fukushima Nuclear Disaster. By comparing the news coverage between March 11 and April 10 2011, and February 12 and March 11 2012, we found when the anniversary of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster approaching, the amount of news reports gradually increased. The dominant frame of the first stage of this study is the strategy frame, and the second stage are the conflict frame and the human interest frame. This study also found the amount of the dramatic style of coverage in the second stage is higher than that in the first stage. And the shortcoming of both the two stage is the lack of diversity of the sources.

This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyse the coverage of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan’s two major English-language newspapers – The Japan Times and The Daily Yomiuri. Quantitative coding is combined with critical discourse analysis to determine whether the coverage was, overall, predominantly alarming, reassuring, or relatively balanced and neutral. This is done to ascertain whether the newspapers were sensationalising the crisis, echoing the official government and industry communication thereof, or reporting in a critical, responsible manner as the fourth estate. To answer the research question, key aspects of the coverage like foci, framing, sources, narratives, actors and agency, and criticisms are closely examined. It is revealed that the coverage was neither predominantly alarming nor reassuring, but was problematic in other ways. The implications of the complex findings, both for the Japanese media industry and international disaster reporting, are discussed. The study is situated in a broad literature framework that draws on agenda setting theory, research about the roles and responsibilities of the media, the field of risk communication and the reporting of radiation events in history. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)

The objective of this research was to estimate the radiological impact on various non-human biotas by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant radiation release resulting from Japan's tsunami in March 2011 consistent with the recent recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection. Soil concentration data given by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (MEXT) were used to approximate doses to various organisms. Cumulative doses and dose rates were plotted in ArcGIS 10, geographic information system (GIS) software, and Kriging interpolations were performed between the sampling points. The conclusion of this preliminary investigation that there appears to be the potential for adverse biological impacts of the studied biota; however, the magnitude of the impact will require further investigation. / Graduation date: 2013