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Bracing Japan: Earthquakes, Nature, Planning, and the (Re)Construction of Japan, 1923-1995

Cothern, Keegan
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3260-6632
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1462783823

Abstract Details

2016, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, East Asian Studies.
Japan has been called, both internally and externally, an earthquake country. 10-20% of the world's major earthquakes (magnitude 6 or greater) afflict a nation that comprises less than a single percent of the world's overall area. Such earthquakes have claimed the lives of around 165,000 Japanese in the past century, while the largest four events alone devastated some $450 billion worth of property. Yet, the Japan of today is hailed by international media to be a particularly earthquake-resilient nation with many advanced mitigating technologies and frameworks for planning and countermeasures to help lessen the impact of future seismic events. An examination of Japan's longer history, however, reveals an uneven implementation of lessons from previous disasters, be they in the form of city planning, the use of technology, or the management of environmental risk. Additionally, the same day-to-day technologies, buildings in which humans live and work, however have themselves long posed the greatest risk to lives during seismic events. Built urban environments in which humans and buildings are clustered are by definition the most dangerous during a disaster. Japan especially also has space limitations within urban environments due to the nature of its islands. Only beginning after a major disaster in 1923 did the Japanese start to codify seismic building provisions and pay more attention to city design. Though historians to date have written on individual earthquakes, what changes or preparation that occurs during the gaps in between seismic events are just as important. Thus, taking a period from 1923 to the last major earthquake of the twentieth century near Kobe in 1995 will demonstrate over a longer period the complex historical process of building and planning to mitigate against potential major earthquake disasters that may or may not ever happen. More broadly, earthquakes demonstrate the agency of nature in a swift and violent manner, and in the case of urban environments, display the convergence of decades of human choices and the contingency of space and time. Historians must further explore how day-to-day and high technology continues to interact with the natural environment all around us, as well as continuing to complicate the narrative of technological progress. Globally, tolls of natural disasters in recent decades have risen sharply as the world's population transitions to a majority urban one, making the study of responses to them increasingly important. Bracing Japan is a critical part of this whole.
Philip Brown (Advisor)
Ying Zhang (Committee Member)
Breyfogle Nicholas (Committee Member)
98 p.
History
Japan; earthquakes; earthquake

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Citations

  • Cothern, K. (2016). Bracing Japan: Earthquakes, Nature, Planning, and the (Re)Construction of Japan, 1923-1995 [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1462783823

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Cothern, Keegan. Bracing Japan: Earthquakes, Nature, Planning, and the (Re)Construction of Japan, 1923-1995. 2016. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1462783823.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Cothern, Keegan. "Bracing Japan: Earthquakes, Nature, Planning, and the (Re)Construction of Japan, 1923-1995." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1462783823

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.