THE ROLE OF INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE
IN THE DISASTER RECOVERY IN FUKUSHIMA
Hiroki Takakura

Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University

Introduc�on
Does culture contribute to disaster recovery, and if it does, how would this occur? Thisis a core question of the present paper. As reported in both domestic andinternational mass-media a�er the 3.11 Great East Japan Disaster (March 11, 2011),
society in post-disaster Japan regards intangible cultural heritage (ICH) such as local
performing arts and rituals as a key element of disaster recovery. The survivors havean opportunity to commemorate the victims and to reflect on the future throughthese heritage activities in local se�ngs. Correspondingly, in the context of disasterrecovery the government and private companies also financially support these events.
The sudden increase in focus on the role of ICH in the post-disaster recovery is adistinguished feature of the 3.11 Japan Disaster (Kimura 2016; Hashimoto 2015;
Lahournat 2016; Takakura 2016, 2018; Takizawa 2019).
On a related note, the sociologist Kyoko Ueda posed an insigh�ul question. ‘Why dothose affected by the Great Earthquake conduct traditional events under the
emergent conditions?’ She argues the reason for this is that the ritual provides aconcept of repetitive time to people who have to deal with practicalities in an
irreversible timeline provided by the reconstruction policy. These rituals encourage thepeople to return their everyday lives (Ueda 2013). In addition, I would like to point out
the integrative function of ritual, which serves to bond individuals to society (Michell1996). The rituals that are part of ICH have two functions: the evocation of a sense ofroutine and the function of social integration, both of which contribute to therecovery of post-disaster society.
The present paper starts to rephrase this issue in the context of Fukushima disasterand to examine the role of rituals or ICH in the post-disaster context. The type of ICH
focused on here is more or less the local religious rituals of Shintoism, which include
the local performing arts like kagura or shishimai and some related festivals. My
argument focuses on the role of ritual in cultural heritage in the post disaster se�ng,
and to this end I ask the following questions. How does ritual serve the disasterreconstruction following the Fukushima nuclear accident? Why do people conductlocal performing arts and festivals? From this standpoint how do anthropologists
contribute the cultural policy of the disaster reconstruction? And, can we propose topolicy makers the idea of better management for this type of ICH?

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The Diﬃcul�es in Fukushima Disaster
There has been much anthropological research on the effects of the disaster following
the explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant a�er the Great East
Japan Earthquake in 2011. These studies argue there is a social influence ofradioactivity and examine how it damages social reliance and local identity (Gill 2013;
Ikeda 2013; Iwagaki et al 2017; McNeil 2013; Uchiyamada 2017; Yamaguchi 2016).
One distinct feature of this research is the study of mother-children evacuation(Horikawa 2018; Morioka 2013; Oikawa 2018; Tatsumi 2014). This is the issue of
distrust of government and science, which in turn damages the cohesion of family, kin,and local community. While the government decides levels of safety in terms ofradiation based on what they consider ‘scientific’ knowledge, members of a familyo�en cannot agree to accept this information in the same manner. Mothers who haveinfants or young children in particular would be sensitive to the effect of nuclear
radiation on their children.
Yoriko Tatsumi (2014) described how mother-child evacuees risk isolation from theirfamilies and local communities. Due to the differentiated risk evaluation of radiation
among husbands and wives and the conditions of employment among family
members, mothers and children o�en are evacuated separately from their husbands
in areas further from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. This behavior
sometimes provokes the criticism of the evacuated mother from those who alreadyaccept (believes) the governmental judgements on safety. The explosion at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant therefore has injured the social reliance infamily and local community.
How can we explain this phenomenon theoretically? The main reason is the healthrisk perception of nuclear radiation: this could be called biological citizenship, which isa key idea of Adriana Petryna as related to Chernobyl anthropological studies. The
biological citizenship is ‘a massive demand for, but selective access to, a form of social
welfare based on scientific and legal criteria that both acknowledges injury andcompensates for it’ (Petryna 2002). While Petryna describes the predicament of thoseaffected by the Chernobyl disaster, she also argues that biological citizenship is a key
for building process of civil society in opposition to the socialist regime (Petryna
1995). On the other hand, in the Fukushima disaster we can identify that biologicalcitizenship rather brings the destruction of social tie for family and kin throughdisabling social consent in anticipation of future events. Sociologist Ulrich Beck statesthat ‘poverty is hierarchic, while smog is democratic’ in the contemporary risk society(Beck 1998: 50). The poverty has been distributed to/formed social classes andtherefore class struggle would be an important element of the solution. Democratic
smog or radiation nullifies the ‘traditional’ type of solidarity against risk.
Let us combine the predicaments of Fukushima disaster with the role of ritual indisaster recovery. The question to be addressed is how ritual, with its evocation ofsense of routine, and the function of social integration work to restore the damagedsocial ties and community reliance in Fukushima. In other words, should
anthropologists propose policy recommendations for disaster recovery emphasizing

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the role of rituals that are part of ICH, and detail how these activities work to restore
damaged solidarity in the affected communities? My concern is whether my researchon ritual activities in ICH may discourage mothers seeking to evacuate from areas
affected by Fukushima Disaster, because the emphasis of these ICH rituals in disasterrecovery may act as pressure for social integration for those who may be hesitant toevacuate. In the following, I will ethnographically describe two types of ICH ritual
activities and examine their effects in the disaster recovery process. Lastly, I also
consider the possibility of policy recommendations in terms of ICH ritual activities inpost disaster condition.

Two Cases of Intangible Cultural Heritage
Case 1: The first case involves local performing arts, the shishimai dance in the mid ofAugust. It is a part of a ritual, which is conducted every four years at Suwajinja Shinto
Shrine at Shimoniida village in Iwaki city (Figure 1). The origin of this ritual backs to17th century (1634). Dancers in three different types of deer-styled masks perform thedance for the local Shinto gods on behalf of rich harvest and off-spring prosperity. It is
impressive that approximately twenty men perform the opening dance with wooden
miniature phalluses before the deer mask dance. The dance groups and a band withJapanese flute first dedicate the dances to the Shinto shrine and parade through thevillage streets during the daytime1.
The youth-men association (seinenkai), and the executive member of the ujiko –parishioner of the local shrine undertake the leading roles in organization and

Figure 11Group picture of the Shimoniida shishimai dance (August 2015). (Source: Takakura
Photo Studio)

The ethnographic film of this shishimai edited by the author is available at the following website:
http://hbdl.handle.net/10097/63692

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111

management. The ujiko is deeply related to the village history. The oﬃcers are electedfrom each street association (tonarigumi) every four years. The street association is aneighborhood organization for mutual collaboration of funeral and landscaping whichdates back to the era of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The members of the youth-men
association come from these street associations. Two weeks before the ritual, they
begin to prepare the necessary prepare tools and training. These men gather for
preparation at the youth-men association house every evening a�er the work even in
weekdays.
Shimoniida village, where this ritual is held, is located 35 km from Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant; here the condition for residence is categorized as ‘safe zone’ by
the Japanese government. Therefore, there are some people who have evacuated to
Iwaki city from regions close to Fukushima Daiichi, which are now classified as‘restricted residence zones’ or ‘diﬃcult to return to zones’. On the other hand, somepeople might even evacuate from Iwaki city and relocate to further regions. The year
2011 is an event year. Despite the disaster that occurred in March the local
communities decided to organize their festivals, because they wanted to conduct
them as usual, although there was some disagreement on this point. Most of the local
residents believe that the implementation of the festival somehow contributes tocommemoration and recovery.
During my fieldwork I was very surprised at the level of activity of the local socialorganizations. The youth-men association has an extraordinary role in the integrationof community members. The association also implemented a well-organizedcollaboration with the senior citizen executives who were Shinto parishioners. Above
all, the phallus representation or the extraordinary open expression of sexual behavior
was quite notable. I believe that this shishimai dance is a typical of ritual – providing
to people the sense of communitas or the liminal phase in the rites of passage. It
certainly innovates life and activates/renews the way of communication inside local
community.
Case 2: The second case concerns the Nagareyama dance in the town of Futaba(Figure 2). This is dance where women wear samurai costumes and sing local ballads
in the annual summer festival in Futaba, which is organized by the Futaba women’s
association. According to local history, the dance was originally male performance;
however, women participated in the performance even in 1960s (Fukushima ken
1964: 1001–1005). The community is located at 5 km from the nuclear power plant.
The territory of Futaba is categorized as a ‘diﬃcult to return to zone’; thus, even now
in 2018 the level of danger is high. The residents of Futaba are now spread acrossdifferent locations in Japan.
When the nuclear accident happened, Futaba residents evacuated from their homes;
one of the places residents went was Tsukuba city, 160 km south from Fukushima
Daiichi. Here, Tomiko Nakamura, a leader of the local women’s association initiatedthe ballad dance activity because the association wanted to give a show of thanks forthe hospitality of Tsukuba’s citizens. The community members had settled in various
places, so Ms Nakamura needed to reorganize the dance group. First she needed to112

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Figure 2
Snap shot of Nagareyama
dance (January 2016).
(Source: H. Takakura)organize a class to teach the dance and to prepare the special costumes. Due to ashortage of participants some men also joined the dance group a�er the disaster. Ms
Nakamura’s activity functions as a node of meeting for those living in different places.
Did this activity help members of the dance group restore the ordinary sense of
everyday life they had before the nuclear accident? When the dance was performed,
former residents must have imagined life before the disaster and associated this withthe tragedy of evacuation and the fact that it is almost impossible to return home. On
the other hand, when I continued the interview with Ms Nakamura, I discovered someinteresting historical background. According to her, this ballad dance is originally a
special program of the annual summer festival of Soma-Nomaoi, which is a nationallywell-known Shinto festival which includes samurai costume horse racing and thecompetition of flag-scramble. The main organizer of the festival is the ujiko – theparishioner of the local shrine for the citizens of the Soma city. The members ofFutaba women’s association participated in performing the Nagareyama dance at
Soma-Nomaoi festival as well as in six other neighboring local communities. The
approximate 80 women from Futaba town participated to the Soma-Nomaoi festival.
The dance group in each community has a chance to participate in Soma-Nomaoi
every six years due to the rotation of these six locations. Besides the six years
opportunity, the local group performs their dance in the annual summer festival ineach community. The reason for this participation of six local communities in the
Soma-Nomaoi festival lies in regional history. These rural communities administratively
belonged to Soma city during the Tokugawa Shogunate period (17–19th centuries).
The maintenance of the Nagareyama dance affords the recognition of the regional
historical legacy from the samurai period and the structured space division once
governed by the Soma clan domain (Figure 3).

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Figure 3

Historical-Cultural Legacy of Social Organization in Fukushima Coast

The Nuer and Fukushima: Two Time Concepts in Intangible Cultural Heritage
I would like to consider the role of ritual in disaster recovery and to further explore
the interpretation of the cases to pose the familiar anthropological concept of timestated in the canonical African ethnography of the Nuer by E. E. Evans-Prichard. He
describes two different time concepts. The first is ecological time – a reflection of the
Nuer’s relations to their environment: ‘it appears to be, and is, cyclical … the daily
timepiece is based on the round of pastoral tasks … such as milking, driving of theadult herd to pasture’. The second one is structural time – a reflection of theinteraction of social groups: ‘(t)he Nuer has another way to stating roughly when
events took place … by reference to the age-set system. Distance between events is
reckoned in terms of structural distance, being the relation between groups ofpeoples. It is therefore entirely relative to the social structure’ (Evans-Pritchard 1969:95, 105).
How can we consider the theoretical implication of the Nuer’s conception of time tounderstand the Fukushima case? First we can easily identify the concept of ecologicaltime in both cases. In the case of Fukushima, the cyclical nature that is a feature of
ecological time can be seen in the way it may afford people a rhythm of life similar tothat before the nuclear disaster, the same argument as in the previous studies on therole of ritual in post disaster se�ng. On the other hand, I would like to emphasize theelements of structural time seen in the two cases in Fukushima. The collaboration
among the young men’s association and the street association, and ujiko-Shinto
parishioners in shishimai dance every four years and that the collaboration of six local

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communities participating in Nagareyama dance groups in six-year rotation should be
noted. Both rituals are considered in terms of structural distance, being the relation
between the groups participating in the events on different years. The participants areable realize the historical-geographical relations between communities, which havenow become diﬃcult to discern. The ritual provides the participants with a sense ofstructured historical-cultural depth embedded in everyday life. It establishes a sense of‘here and now’ among people and, on the other hand, awakens the possibility ofalternative multifaceted relationships between people.
The structural time in ritual provides a new way of social integration that goes beyond‘here and now’, which may be critical in repairing damaged solidarity or supporting
mothers and children who have evacuated due to radiation risk. I would like toconsider the political implication of the ritual type of ICH for the evacuees. Both theshishimai and Nagareyama dances provide a perception of routine livelihood andsocial relationships yet also simultaneously demonstrate alternative time-spaceconcepts and potential for new ways of communication. The ritual does not always
force people to aﬃrm the context of a given community. Rather it can renew thesocial structure with some degree of time and space for future. In particular, thepractice of Nagareyama dance is a trial both for recovering the once existing historicalstructure represented by the livelihood of the residents of Futaba and for renewing
the social relations of the evacuees from homes in the radioactive areas.
In a post-disaster society, rituals highlight the structured legacy of human life, which
are a historical-geographical basis of current everyday life. If one considers the powerof rituals that are part of ICH in terms of their contribution to innovations in social
structure, it is important to place them at the forefront of future development in arevised form of social organization.

Conclusion
The core question of this paper is how do cultural traditions afford the people a senseof recovery? While I describe the features of the disaster surrounding the Fukushima
nuclear accident, I examine a way that rituals as part of ICH work in the post-disastersociety. One of my conclusions is that there is a new role of culture or ICH rituals in
disaster recovery. Previous studies point to the evocation of sense of routine andsocial integration as a key for recovery, a phenomenon that is almost identical to theecological time concept of the Nuer. This paper uncovers the structural time concept
in the Nuer and the historical-geographical depth in ritual which may renew previous
ways of social integration.
Another conclusion of this study relates to the policy recommendation fromanthropologists concerning the advantage of structural time in rituals that are part of
ICH. If we consider the role of culture in post-disaster se�ngs, culture should containnot only traditional activities but also modern festival such as pop concerts. I don’t
deny the effects of the latter. However, anthropologists could advocate for the rituals
in ICH because the structural time concept changes ways of social integration. In
addition, voluntary leadership based on traditions in rituals is a key for local initiatives

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in disaster recovery. The rituals in ICH may be an unparalleled social instrument incertain conditions.

A��������������
This work was supported by MEXT/JSPS Kakenhi Grant Number JP: 17K03270 and by the Core
Research Cluster of Disaster Science in Tohoku University (Designated National University).

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