Search Results

This chapter details the findings and analysis for operative adaptive systems. Four earthquake response and recovery systems included in this study fall in this initial category of operative adaptive systems: the 1999 Duzce, Turkey, earthquake; the 2009 Padang, Indonesia, earthquake; the 2011 Tohoku, Japan, earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear breach; and the 2015 Nepal earthquakes. All four response systems share the characteristic of seeking to adapt rapidly to an environment suddenly altered by a major earthquake. Yet, the capacity of each governmental system to extend the process of adaptation beyond the immediate response into a newly re-stabilized recovery system varied markedly, depending on the scale of the destruction incurred, the scope of reconstruction required, and the rate of change over time needed for recovery. Moreover, while each of these four cases exhibited some capacity in technical and social areas, none had strong midlevel networks that could bridge national and local functions easily.

This Chapter is designed to address the challenges of present Japan think tanks, with a focus on policy analysis, through the three areas of analysis: 1) an overview of think tanks in Japan by articulating relevant gaps with key ingredients of strictly-defined think tanks; 2) an exploration of how think tanks have been incorporated into Japanese society, by identifying the differences between think tanks in Japan and in the United States, and articulating relevant policy and social systems interlinked to the state of think tanks; 3) a case study of the 2011 Tohoku Disaster which examines how the state of think tanks in Japan is relevant to specific public policy. Based on these analysis, the final section provides a discussion of policy analysis and think tanks in Japan in the context of seeking for alternative models.

From 2004-2009, members of the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science undertook a five-year study entitled Kibōgaku (Hope-ology, translated formally as The Social Sciences of Hope). Looking to rebuild hope in Japan after the pop of the economic Bubble, the scholars crafted a survey of Kamaishi, a declining steel town on Japan’s northeastern coast, showing how networks in and out of the city were central to its limited but measurable successes in inspiring local hope for a better future. In the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami that devastated the town, killing a thousand residents, the scholars confronted questions of what hope means and what the connections between rural and urban Japan might mean.

This chapter focuses on Shimazaki Tōson's time in Sendai during the period 1896–1898. It begins with a background on Sendai and its place in Japanese culture and proceeds by discussing Tōson's arrival in Sendai. It then considers Tōson's teaching duties at Tōhoku Gakuin, the death of his mother Shimazaki Nui, his reflections on the Kiso Road, and examples of his poetry, including Young Herbs, Hitohabune (Leaf Boat), and Natsugusa (Summer Grasses). It also recounts Tōson's resignation from Tōhoku Gakuin and his return to Tokyo in July 1897. Finally, it looks at Tōson's first piece of prose fiction, the novella “Utatane” (The Nap); the foldup of Bungakkai; and Tōson's travel to Fukushima.

Chapter 1 explains the structure of, and key players in, the reinsurance market; the insurers (cedents), reinsurers, and brokers. This book focuses on the reinsurers who, despite being competitors, collectively bear the risk of unpredictable disasters, which is transferred to them from insurance companies around the world. The chapter particularly examines the practice of reinsurance underwriters who evaluate, price and trade these risks from their hubs in Lloyd’s of London, Bermuda, Continental Europe, and Singapore. This chapter opens with an evocative account of the devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, 2011, as an example of the unpredictable disasters that reinsurers underwrite. The chapter then explains the basic principles of the way that this market works and how risk is traded. The remainder of the chapter introduces our social practice theory approach and the novel framework of making markets through relationality, nested relationality and relational presence that is developed in this book.