The Public Anthropology of Disaster: An Introductory Note

On March 11, 2011, a mega-earthquake of 9.0 magnitude struck East Japan, followed by a huge tsunami. The earthquake and tsunami damaged vast areas, particularly along the Pacific coast of the Tohoku region, and killed approximately 20,000 people, including the missing. The Japanese government estimated the damage at about 17 trillion Japanese yen. However, the damage is immeasurable if the breakdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants is taken into consideration. This is a huge complex disaster, caused by the triple factors of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power meltdown, which humans had never experienced before.