Life Beyond the Tohoku Disasters

With great compassion and commitment rooted in decades of iterant, intimate engagement, Alyne Delaney paints a vivid picture of a rural Japanese culture that long received little attention in academia: the world of local fishers and nori seaweed cultivators in the Tōhoku region - both before, during, and after 3.11. This book is about more than the multiple disasters of March 2011 and their consequences, as Delaney's intimate knowledge and long-time connections allow her to artfully portray these local communities before as much as accompany them throughout the struggles of disasters and reconstruction. The book also clearly highlights the disruptive forces of reconstruction policies, which altered the landscape and the organization of work more than the earthquake and tsunami. Nevertheless, as she stresses the resilience, adaptability, and drive for autonomy of her proponents, Delaney does much more than create a moving memorial of a local fishing culture lost in disaster, leaving us with the hope that this coastal life will continue and evolve, cautiously reconnecting with the sea, be it from behind gargantuan seawalls and in new corporatized forms of engaging with the ocean. --Sonja Ganseforth, Leipzig University, Institute for Geography Life Beyond the Tōhoku Disasters beautifully narrates the rich history and way of life of seaweed fishing communities in northern Japan. Based on her long-term ethnographic engagement with those coastal residents before and after the 3.11 disaster, Alyne Delaney convincingly depicts their experiences of changes, challenges, and even joy, and how their quotidian practices allowed them to cultivate resilience. --Satsuki Takahashi, author of Fukushima Futures: Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape