Livelihood Support for the Early Recovery in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

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Livelihood Support for the Early Recovery
in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami―Lessons for Developing Countries―
KANEKO Yuka＊

Ⅰ．Purpose and Method of Study
１．Early Recovery in the Prolonged Suspension of Land Use
This article is an attempt to examine institutional issues in victim aid in the
Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011 (hereinafter referred toas the GEJET), to enable developing countries to enhance victim aid during the slow
and prolonged recovery process from a mega disaster. Although the recovery fromthe GEJET is a phenomenon taking place in a developed economy, it has relevance todeveloping economies in that the nature of the particular economy in the devastated
GEJET areas is a rural economy characterized by inter-industry relations streamingfrom the primary industries, especially fishery, and also that the fiscal dependency
of local governments on the central government has resulted in a confused processof decision-making for the disaster recovery, causing an increasing call for livelihood
support for hundreds of thousands of disaster victims who have been kept waiting forthe delayed outcome of town recovery planning.
Furthermore, the situation where an affected local government in the GEJET
which has no alternative but to depend on the national budgetary support, may becomparable to the situation where many developing countries necessarily depend on
international donors. Donor moneys have often been directed, in the name of disasterrecovery, to big development projects for the facilitation of industrial development
even at the expense of rehabilitation of livelihoods of individual disaster victims(IFRC 2005). At the same time, there are calls for an alternative approach whereby
truly victim-oriented humanitarian donors can donate to long-term victim aid directed
toward the recovery of livelihoods, beyond short-term provision of basic needs, or* LL.D., Professor, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University.

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in other words, an “early recovery” to link the phase of emergency humanitarian
support to the succeeding phase of recovery (IRP/UNDP/ISDR 2008). The Japaneseexperience in the GEJET in institutionalizing varieties of measures for livelihood
support can be worth studying by those who have concerns for better institutional
designs of “early recovery.”In the following sections, this article will first explore the background of theextraordinary delay of land-use planning for disaster recovery in the GEJET, resulting
in increasing calls for livelihood support. The national government has repeatedly
cautioned that decision-making for post-tsunami land-use planning can take certain
time, and accordingly, a prolonged suspension of land-use in inundated areas may benecessary (National Land Agency of Japan, 1993). In contrast to the experience ofKobe City following the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, a giant but simple
earthquake, where a land-use ban was required for merely two months for a limitedarea of 151ha in total, the land-use ban (both by explicit regulation and implicit
administrative guidance) in the GEJET has continued more than eighteen months since
2 1March 11, 2011 for a total area of 560km .

However, the real problem in the GEJET

seems not just the length of this ban, but the unpredictability of its lifting. None of
the “basic recovery plans” disclosed by the affected municipal governments during
the period of seven to nine months after the GEJET contained any concrete land-use
planning. Though this slowness and ambiguity of recovery planning might remind usof the post-Hurricane Katarina land-use planning which took eighteen months before
the first proposal, such a delay is extraordinary in the history of Japanese disaster
response. For example, a recent tsunami disaster in the Hokkaido South-East Coast
Earthquake of 1993, a concrete disaster recovery plan was disclosed within a threemonth period for major inundated areas. Without first comprehending the structuralproblem behind this delay of recovery planning in the GEJET, we cannot analyze thedesirable reach and degree of livelihood support for disaster victims, who have been
kept in suspension regarding land-use for months. 		
This article will next examine the gap between the existing institutionalframework of public aid and the particularly prominent needs of the GEJET-affected
people for livelihood support, based on the findings from the author’s fieldworkin the tsunami-inundated areas in Iwate Prefecture, one of the most seriously

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affected regions in the GEJET. The present system for disaster relief in Japan was
strengthened after the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, with a particular stress on
the measures for protecting employment and housing reconstruction, in responseto the calls of urban citizens. However, the rural economy annihilated by the GEJET
demands more measures for livelihood reconstruction, instead of support for housing
and employment. The central government did, in fact, take quick action for livelihood
support within two months after the GEJET, even beyond extending fiscal support tothe primary industries as already institutionalized under the 1962 Law for Special
Fiscal Measures in Mega Disasters, by additionally introducing a series of ad hoc
measures for the protection of small-and-medium-sized enterprises. However, theaftermath of these ad hoc measures has turned out to be controversial, because of
confused policy orientation as well as weak institutional designs.
２．Method: static analysis of institutions combined with fieldwork
After confirming the static characteristics of existing measures for victim
aid, this article examines the actual implementation of such measures based on
the results of consecutive fieldwork conducted by the author and her colleagues intsunami-inundated areas in Miyako, Yamada, Otsuchi, Kamaishi, etc. in the Iwate
Prefecture, including interviews with affected people evacuated to temporary
housing, affected business owners, officers in charge of recovery planning at affectedmunicipalities, local bankers, local industrial associations such as fishermen cooperatives, chambers of commerce, associations for promotion of shopping complexes,
and professional consultants such as lawyers and land & building surveyors, duringvisits in early-May 2011, early-June 2011, late-July 2011, early-August 2011, early
October 2011, late December 2011, late February 2012, mid-March 2012, mid-June
2012, and late July 2012, in which semi-structured interviews with disaster victims
based on questionnaire sheets were answered by 47 persons in July 2011, 50 persons
in October 2011, and 45 victims and 35 affected business owners in February
2012. Interviews were also conducted with officials at central and prefectural
governmental agencies in charge of financial and industrial supports to the affected
small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SME), including the Agency for Small-Medium
Enterprise under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Organization for

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Small-Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation (Tokyo head office and Morioka
satellite), the Japan Finance Cooperation in charge of policy-oriented lending (boththe micro business and individual units and the SME units in Tokyo and Morioka), theDevelopment Bank of Japan, the Iwate Prefectural Government, and Iwate Industrial
Recovery Consultation Center in August 2011, December 2011, and June 2012.

Ⅱ．Land-use Planning in Confusion: Problems of Budget and Sequence
１．Safety Policy Controlled by Recovery Budget
Eighteen months passed from the occurrence of GEJET in March 11, 2011,
but the recovery planning for inundated housing lands is still incomplete throughout
the devastated coastal areas in East Japan, putting the fate of reconstruction ofcommercial and industrial activities in suspension all the while. This delay is often
explained by the affected municipal officials as the result of difficulty in obtaining theconsent of local land-owners who are tsunami-affected victims lost everything except
the inundated land, residing in temporary housing, and are waiting for something economically as advantageous as possible. The real reason for this difficulty of obtaining
consent seems, however, to be an antipathy increasingly held among the affected
citizens toward the process and the substance of the government-led decision on thebasic recovery plan introduced in each affected municipality one after another in theautumn 2011, based on a problematic anti-disaster safety policy which was decided
by the Central Disaster Preventive Conference in September 2011 to affect the whole
succeeding process of town-planning for disaster recovery in the affected municipalities.
Why did the safety policy need to be a government-led one, despite all theemphases on “local autonomy” stated in every official document on the procedural
framework of disaster recovery, including the Basic Disaster Prevention Plan
(Chapter-3) periodically decided by the Central Disaster Preventive Conference in
response to the 1961 Basic Law on Disaster Countermeasures, as well as the Manualon Disaster Recovery Countermeasures recently issued by the Cabinet Office(Cabinet
Office 2010a, Sec.1-2-2-1, etc.)? Our learning so far reveals how seriously budget

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considerations can decide the fate of the recovery in such a world-scale megadisaster as the GEJET. In the very early stage of post-GEJET recovery, an ideal of the“disaster mitigation instead of disaster prevention” was emphasized in the proposal
made by the Reconstruction Design Council formed directly under the prime minister(Reconstruction Design Council 2011), encouraging the relocation of housing areasfrom lower tsunami-inundated areas to higher ground as a safer choice than relying onsuch hard infrastructures as levees and breakwaters．However, in September, 2011,
soon after the sudden change of the prime minister, the Central Disaster Preventive
Conference surprisingly returned to a reliance on hard infrastructure by introducing
the idea of building great levees capable of blocking the Level-1 class tsunamis whichhave occasionally hit East Japan at intervals of every hundred years or so. A special
budget for disaster recovery of a total of 19 trillion yen was concluded to be requiredin the central bureaucracy by the end of year 2011, in response to the pleas from theaffected municipalities for 100% national fiscal support for the town recovery projects
involving land relocation and/or land filling projects as the means of safety. However,it should be noted that only low-lying land where a tsunami inundation of more than
two meters was expected based on the simulations of a possible subsequent Level-2
class tsunami (GEJET class), assuming the construction of above-mentioned Level-1
class height levees, was decided as the target of the national fiscal support, whileleaving all other inundated areas automatically out of the reach of national support.
Upon receiving this clarification of the limits of full coverage of national support,
as if competing in a race, tsunami-affected municipal governments started to rush
to perform the procedural steps for a formal administrative decision on each “basic
recovery plan” in the period between October and December 2011 so as to be intime for the third supplementary national fiscal allocation for FY2011. This hasty
process and the ambiguous wordings of each basic recovery plan made it difficult
for the affected local citizens to understand the proposals precisely, and therefore, it
took months before the substance of such administrative decisions became the targetof criticism. The plan turned out to be a crucial decision that narrowed the reachof governmental support for land relocation and/or land filling projects into limitedareas, namely the “disaster risk areas” identified according to the aforementioned
result of tsunami simulation. Although various questionnaires conducted by both gov-

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ernmental and private sources had identified the basic intention of a large majorityof the disaster affected population to prefer the land relocation to high lands to otherchoices of safety measures, mainly for the sake of the safety of future generations, itcame as a cruel discovery to learn that the majority of basic recovery plans narrowed
the reach of relocation projects only to a limited land area coming under the reachof national fiscal support. Those who have lands outside of the demarcation of these“disaster risk areas” were doomed to stay in lower lands, always facing the great
levees, in fear of the next Level-2 class tsunamis which no one can deny might recursoon.
The weak fiscal condition of the affected municipalities, a common phenomenon
in rural regions in Japan which suffer from the continual decrease of population asa result of scarcity of jobs in a low-value-added economy based mainly on primaryindustries, has been predominant since before the GEJET, with the fiscal independence index constantly floundering around 15～        50% range, in contrast to that of Kobe
City at 83% in 1995 Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. Nor did these communities have apermanent fund in preparation for disaster recovery. Furthermore, these affectedmunicipalities have lived in fear of a budgetary crisis which had become a real risk
especially since the insolvency of Yubari City in Hokkaido in 2007, evidence of thefrightening fact that the national government would no longer bail out municipalities
for fiscal nonperformance in the new era of local autonomy since the amendment to
the Local Autonomy Law in 1999. It was a natural behavior of these municipalities
to call for and rely on the 100% national support for the disaster recovery projects.
As a consequence of their dependency on the central budget, however, the affectedmunicipalities have quickly become bound by national politics and the sectionalism
between central ministries, which manipulated the fate of safety policies in theinundated areas in disregard to the will of the local victims to seek for true safety.
This government-led safety policy is facing difficulties in the succeeding stageof disaster recovery. As the affected landowners have slowly comprehended thenarrowed substance of the basic recovery plan, they have turned negative towardgiving consent to the municipality-led safety projects. Since the municipal officials
cannot force any safety measures involving changes to private land use unless theyobtain minimum levels of consent set by the national government as a condition forLivelihood Support for the Early Recovery in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

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disbursing national support, they have to continue their time-consuming efforts to2

persuade individual households. Meanwhile, the landscape of the affected areas
appears almost frozen showing no hint of progress even eighteen months after the
GEJET.
２．Sequence in the Recovery Planning
It is worthy noting that the planning for recovery projects by the affectedmunicipalities has taken a sequential approach giving first priority to the recovery of
housing lands based on the guidelines set by the Ministry of Land and Transportation, while putting the commercial and industrial recovery planning aside, in anticipation of guidance and funds from other relevant ministries in the succeeding stages.
Being asked the reason for this step-by-step approach, most of the municipal officials
in charge of recovery planning confess that they cannot cope with all of the sectionalist central ministries at once, and hence have adopted a one-by-one approach. They
also insist that any strategic discussion on the recovery plan for commercial andindustrial areas is vain without obtaining decisive support from the national budget.
As the menu of standardized policy measures involving subsidies at a high national3

coverage rate for commercial recovery is limited, most of the affected municipalities
are reluctant to take initiatives in fear of budgetary risk.
During the delay in economic recovery planning, the fate of tsunami-affected
commercial and industrial entrepreneurs seems divided as shown in Table-1,
implying the adverse effects of governmental intervention such as safety policies andlivelihood aid.
As for the disaster-preventive measures for safety policy, although theconstruction of giant levees defensible against the Level-1 or once-a-century classtsunami (corresponding to the class of Meiji-Sanriku Tsunami in 1896) was a resultof the aforementioned decision by the Central Disaster Preventive Conferencein September 2011, the actual heights of levees for each bay-unit decided by therelevant ministries and the prefectural governments in charge of rehabilitationof coastal infrastructures are different from the real recorded levels of the 1896
tsunami. Instead, the decided heights seem to reflect levels capable of protecting
the industrially concentrated areas in each bay-unit, where leading manufactur-

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Table-1:  State of Economic Recovery according to the Types of Affected Entrepreneurs
Industry

Safety Policy
according to Location

Manufacturing Protection by Levees

Retail(Capable ofutilizing the
temporarybusinessfacilities)

Tourism(Incapable ofutilizing the
temporarybusinessfacilities)

State of Recovery
Immediate reconstruction on the original land.
Full utilization of governmental subsidies.

Land-filling, confiscation

Reconstruction suspended.
Utilization of temporary business facilities.
Limited chance of governmental subsidies.

Protection by Levees

Immediate Reconstruction on the original land ispossible but actually difficult because of the delay
in housing area recovery.
Limited chance of governmental subsidies.

Land-filling area

Reconstruction suspended.
Utilization of temporary business facilities.
Limited chance of governmental subsidies.

Higher land relocation

Reconstruction suspended.
Utilization of temporary business facilities.
Limited chance of governmental subsidies.
No subsidies for higher land relocation forcommercial/ industrial entities (only for housing).

Protection by Levees

Immediate reconstruction on the original land ispossible but actually difficult because of the delay
in housing area recovery.
Limited chance of governmental subsidies.

Land-filling

Reconstruction suspended.
Incapable of utilizing temporary business facilities.
Limited chance of governmental subsidies.

(Summary by Author)

ing businesses in the region are located, from the Level-2 or once-a-millenniumclass tsunamis such as the GEJET, to the effect that medium-large industries can
immediately start their reconstruction activities without worrying about the outcomes4of town planning. In fact, many of industrial actors in the areas to be protected by
the giant levees have promptly resumed productive activities, fully utilizing the governmental ad hoc measures introduced in the name of disaster-affected SME support,
to be discussed in the following sections in details. On the other hand, the industries
located in the expected land-filling areas, or areas to be confiscated for the construction of giant levees, have no other choice but waiting for the progress of the overall
recovery procedures.
The levees are, on the other hand, controversial and even detrimental toLivelihood Support for the Early Recovery in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

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the safety of housing areas. The height set at the defensible level for industries is
too short for some housing areas (resulting automatically in a division of the local
community into the group of land-relocation/ land-filling projects targeted to receive
full national support, on one hand, and the group left to self-reconstruction on theoriginal low land without any fiscal support, on the other, based on the governmentdecided standard of two-meter-depth inundation), or too high for other housing
areas (any fiscal support denied since the result of tsunami simulation is less than
two-meter-depth, despite however hard the local community aspire to a higher
land relocation). Now that the gap is apparent between the governmental line forsafety and the will of the affected people envisaging the true estimation of what will
determine safety for next generations, not a few communities in affected areas haveturned negative to the government-led land-use plans based on the problematic great
levees.
Accordingly, the concrete land-use plans for housing areas are unsettled, andconcurrently, affected commercial entrepreneurs are incapable as well of resuming
reconstruction of permanent activities, as they naturally seek commercial locations
close to the housing areas. Adding to their stress, during this prolonged suspensionof recovery, their commercial rivals located outside the tsunami-inundated areas
have easily dominated the local market, making full use of varieties of subsidies andother governmental supports which should have been directed to the most seriously
5affected small-scale entrepreneurs. Especially, in comparison with retail businesses,
tourist businesses are in the worst situation, as they cannot even make use of the“temporary business facilities” provided as one of the governmental support to the6affected SMEs.

An implication from these on-going facts is the problem of careless intervention
by government aid to the commercial and industrial recovery, which the next section
will explore in detail.

Ⅲ．Law and Implementation on Livelihood Support for Disaster Victims
１．Inconsistent System of Victim Aid

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The balance between public aid for disaster victims and private self-reliance
has long been an issue in Japan since the early stage of formal law formation in theth

Meiji modernization era in the late 19 century. The initial attempt at standardizationof public aid by the draft bill of Disaster Victim Relief Law was blocked in 1890 at theDiet, and instead, the Law on Disaster Damage Assistant Fund was enacted in 1899
as a result of a compromise with the liberalist thought making much of self-relianceto be supplemented by charity funds. After World War II, the present Law on Disaster
Relief was introduced in 1947 as the basic law for public aid for disaster victims
in Japan, with a fairly wide reach of assistance to be provided for not only basic
emergency needs such as foods and shelters but also the basic means of livelihood
both in kinds and in cash (Art.23). However, the government has narrowed theinterpretation on the reach of the Law to the basic needs in kinds through occasional
administrative guidelines by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, against
which civic movements have realized the institutionalization of additional series ofrelief in cash, by the enactment of special laws including the 1973 Law on Disaster
Condolence Money and the 1998 Law on Support for Reconstruction of Disaster
Victims’ Living. In addition, varieties of ad hoc measures for public aid have also
been occasionally implemented by way of regulations by central ministries as wellas prefectural and municipal implementations. Varieties of mutual aid such as theJapan Red Cross contributions and mutual funds led by municipal governments, labor
unions, cooperatives, and many other public and private entities, have also supplemented the limitation of formal and/or ad hoc public aid (Yamazaki 2011). Thus, theholistic structure of Japanese disaster victim aid can be summarized as a systemcentering on the basic law for disaster relief mainly dealing with aid in kind for basic
needs, supplemented by special laws for public aid in cash for livehood support,
and further supplemented by ad hoc public aid by various administrative levels for
additional needs, as well as the mutual aid such as charity moneys and mutual funds.
This Japanese system for disaster victim aid involving multiple supply sources
seems, at a first glance, generous enough, and has even been deemed detrimental
to private self-reliance in preparation for disasters (Economic and Social ResearchInstitute of Cabinet Office, 2009). However, the post-GEJET implementation has
revealed the incompleteness of the system, with numbers of overlaps and blanks

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in coverage. First is the limitation of the Disaster Relief Law not only in the extent
of assistance but also in the time period during which the assistance is provided.
According to the implementation manuals and guidelines provided by the national
government for guiding the operation by local governments, provision of disaster
reliefs are basically available for the early period of “emergency disaster response”
7

when the disaster victims basically stay in temporary evacuation shelters, witha room for flexible extension usually to the period of not more than two-to-threemonths, which means that, upon the nominal shift to the “disaster recovery period”
as with the move out of the emergency shelters, the disaster victims are kept out
from the emergency protections and forced to come under the normal minimum careby the ordinary social welfare system that is basically only available for the “weak in
8disaster,” namely the aged or disabled persons. However, given the aforementioned
facts of extraordinary delay in the post-GEJET recovery planning for land use, andthe prolonged suspension of individual livelihood reconstruction as a result, it isunreasonably cruel to automatically cut off the emergency reliefs upon the nominal
shift from the emergency phase to the recovery phase. As long as the present
manual for the Law on Disaster Relief is automatically implemented, victims in megadisasters will never be able to get relief during the lengthy suspension period in therecovery phase.
Hence the need for special laws and measures is evident. However, theexisting special laws have blank areas in coverage. The 1973 Law on Disaster
Condolence Money is available for households which have lost the main-income
earners, whereas the 1998 Law on Support for Reconstruction of Disaster Victims’
9

Living concentrates only on households which have lost housing; neither reaches
the needs of those who have lost the bases of livelihood. In addition, mutual aid,such as the Red Cross contributions to be distributed basically upon housing loss,
distribution of electric appliances to those who in temporary housing, and various
special measures for housing reconstruction, have all been made available for those
who incurred housing losses. These measures were the result of intensive civic callsin the post-Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake recovery phase, which was after all a typicalurban-type disaster involving a large population of white collar workers who lost
houses but maintained their employment. In contrast to this, empirical surveys of the国 際 協 力 論 集

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characteristics of physical losses in the GEJET have identified prominent losses tothe bases of livelihood, such as fishery and marine products facilities where a large
number of people in the rural economy have made their living, often located near
the coast and directly attacked by the tsunami, even in areas where the housing loss
10

is relatively limited.

The variance in the antipathy held among affected people tothe disparity of distribution of public aid between those who lost houses and those
who lost livelihoods was evident in the result of author’s interviews.

11

The incentive

measures for employment protection developed after the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake,such as unemployment insurance payments during the temporary businesssuspension of the employer or subsidies for employers for the encouragement ofcontinued employment, were also available in the post-GEJET context, but they were
not always relevant to the rural economy centering on small-scale businesses insteadof the urban-type employment.
A lesson from the GEJET is, so far, the need for the reconstruction of thedisaster relief system from a single-economy model based on an urban economy witha focus on housing and employment support to a multiple-economy model inclusiveof a set of measures suitable for a rural-type economy where individual small-scalebusinesses play a central role rather than large-scale employers which can be thedirect target of industrial protection by the government. Although certain categories
of livelihood support do exist under the Law on Special Fiscal Supports in Mega
Disasters enacted in 1962, they are basically directed to the primary industries, with
only limited consideration for commercial and industrial sectors, not more than atemporary interest payment allowance for small-medium-sized enterprises. There isan undeniable gap between the policy concerns in the early 1960s when the primaryindustries were independent from other economic sectors and the present economy
based on a strong mutual relation among industries, which makes a single support
to the primary industry meaningless without simultaneous reconstruction of down
stream industries in the same chain.
２．Ad hoc Measures for SME Support
It was not that the Japanese government lacked the will to deal with the characteristic livelihood losses in the GEJET. To the contrary, by early May, 2011, upon the87Livelihood Support for the Early Recovery in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

declaration by the Cabinet Office of the first supplementary budget while introducing
a series of special measures for a designated mega disaster, central ministries
started to campaign for varieties of ad hoc measures meant for the encouragement.

of reconstruction of small-and-medium-sized enterprises (Cabinet Office 2012) The
problem, however, seemed to be a confused policy basis which created overlaps andcontradictions.
Table-2 attempts to classify the ad hoc public support into three categories,
according to the mode and the degree of concession, and shows the comparison withsimilar measures adopted after the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995.
The first is a group of special financial measures, including a highly concessional “special lending scheme” for long-term and low interest lending by thegovernmental policy-based financial institutions, up to the amount of total 1 billion
yen, for concessional terms such as 20 years with a grace period of 5 years, with thechance of interest exemption by way of the interest supplementing scheme by theOrganization for Small-Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation to be provided
through the prefectural governments, and with the free guarantee of 100% coveragefor SME by the Credit Guarantee Cooperation made available up to 160 million yen.
This much concessional lending is actually meant to provide for the “avoidance of
double debts” or the restructuring of nonperforming previous debts as the result of
the GEJET. In comparison to the similar measures adopted in the post-Hanshin-Awaji
Earthquake recovery, however, the degree of concession in the post-GEJET measures
is remarkable. Especially, in sharp contrast to what happened in the Hanshin-Awaji
Earthquake when a scheme for previous debt reduction was strongly called for
by affected businesses but never attained, a number of schemes directed for the
restructuring of previous debts of affected businesses have been introduced in the
post-GEJET recovery process, including the Guidelines for Private Arrangements
formed under the Financial Service Agency, the establishment of the Organization for
Industrial Recovery Assistance in each affected prefecture by the cooperation with
the Agency for Small-Medium Enterprises, and the establishment of the Organization for Support for Business Recovery from the Great East Japan formed under thesupervision of the newly established Reconstruction Agency in February 2012, as if
competing each other for the degree of concession.

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Second, the provision of temporary business facilities (shops and factories) has
been featured since the early stage of disaster management after the GEJET, to beconstructed and transferred by the Organization for Small-Medium Enterprises andRegional Innovation to the affected municipalities, and then to be used by the affectedbusinesses for two years without charge more than a nominal rent. The idea stemmed
from the experience in the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake when a total of 170 temporary
business lots were made available for 234 affected SMEs with certain economicallyreasonable rents. However, the provision of these facilities is much more extensivein the post-GEJET context covering a total of 3,217 temporary business lots in 598
complexes in 50 municipalities (as of May 2012), accompanied by intensive dispatchof free advisors for the support of business recovery plans.
Third, and the most remarkable characteristic in the post-GEJET ad hoc
measures for livelihood support, is the large amounts of subsidies directly offeredto the affected enterprises, under various schemes from relevant ministries andlocal governments. Above all, the most influential one has been the “measure forrehabilitation of facilities for group use by small-medium enterprises” (hereinafter the“SME Group Subsidy”) introduced by the Agency for Small-Medium Enterprises under
the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. It features a largeness of the grant
to be distributed to each member in a SME group, up to the amount corresponding
to 3/4 of the recovery investment, usually expected to be as much as several tens
million through hundreds million yen, as well as the flexible interpretation of a“group” to even include nominal ones. As the needs of affected businesses for thesubsidies sharply increased after the initial distribution of total 17.9 billion yen to
28 groups, the Agency decided to extend the measure five times up to the present,
reaching a total 281 billion yen distributed to 290 groups as of August 2012. Despite
this popularity of the SME Group Subsidy, however, criticism is also increasing on
its limited access particularly for small-scale businesses, as the rule of distribution
has been controlled at the prefectural level where the degree of “contribution to
the regional economy” has often been given more consideration than the degree of“hardship” to the affected people.

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Table-2: Measures for Livelihood Support: Comparison between Hanshin-Awaji and the
GEJET
Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake〈Market-Oriented〉
Financial
Measures

GEJET〈State-Oriented〉● Measures for Old Debt Reduction or ● Measures for Old Debt Reduction or Double-debt
Double-debt Avoidance:
Avoidance:
・Temporary grace period set for repayment ・Administrative guidance on temporary grace for theto the governmental financial institutions.
repayment to all financial institutions.
・Guidelines for Private Arrangement
・Organizations for Industrial Recovery Assistance・Organization for Supports for East Japan Recovery● Measures for New Money Introduction:
・ Special Lending by the governmental
financial institutions (15 year loan period; 2year grace period; maximum loan amount of
300 million yen for SME; 60 million yen forsmall-proprietors)
・Guarantee without charge by the
Association for SME Credit Guarantee (90%coverage; up to 10 million yen)・Special lending by the local governments(up to 5 million yen; no guarantee) + interest
supplementing scheme by the Recovery
Fund・Interest-free lending scheme for modernization by the Organization for SmallMedium Enterprises and Regional Innovation(20 year loan period; 5 year grace period;
coverage by the Organization 67.5% ： byPrefecture 22.5%：own fund 10%)
・Guarantee-free Lending for Smallproprietors by the Chamber of Commerce(7.5 million yen)

● Measure for New Money Introduction:
・ Special Lending by the governmental financial
institutions with extended concession: General Scheme(15 year loan period; 3 year grace period; maximum
loan amount of 720 million yen for SME; 48 million
yen for small-proprietors) and Additional Scheme (20year loan period; 5 year grace period; maximum loan
amount of 300 million yen for SME; 60 million yen forsmall-proprietors)
・Guarantee without charge by the Association for
SME Credit Guarantee (100% coverage; up to 160
million yen)・Interest supplementing scheme by the Organizationfor Small-Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation(100%).
・Interest-free lending scheme for modernization by
the Organization for Small-Medium Enterprises andRegional Innovation (20 year loan period; 5 year
grace period; coverage by the Organization 98%：byPrefecture 1%：own fund 1%)・Guarantee-free Lending for Small-proprietors by the
Chamber of Commerce (10 million yen)

T e m p o r a r y ● Lease on charge of temporary shops
B u s i n e s s and factories (constructed by the local
Facilities
governments and partially financed by
the interest-free lending scheme formodernization by Organization for SmallMedium Enterprises and Regional Innovation )● Advisory Services● Lease with no or low charge of temporary shops andfactories (constructed by the interest-free lending
scheme for modernization by Organization for SmallMedium Enterprises and Regional Innovation; 85%
coverage)● Advisory Services: intensive scheme for free
dispatch of Recovery Support Advisors

Subsidies● Subsidies to Primary Industries (1962 ● Subsidies to Primary Industries (1962 Law):
・Fishing ships for group-use（by 2/3）
Law):・Rehabilitation of sea-culture facilities（by 9/10）
・Facilities for group use（by 2/3）
・Clearing of debris in fishing fields, etc.
● Subsidies to SME:
・SME Group Subsidy（National G. 2/4 + Prefecture
1/4）
・ Subsidies for Repayments （ Prefecture 1/4 ＋
Municipality 1/4）up to 20 million yen(Summary by Author)
Note: Newly introduced concessional measures in the GEJET identified in Italic.

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３． Implementation of ad hoc Measures
Though vigorously implemented since the early stage of the post-GEJET
recovery, ad hoc measures have been harshly criticized by business circle in theaffected areas. The following outline of findings from the author’s series of fieldwork
conducted in Iwate Prefecture identifies specific underlining reasons for the criticism.
The most striking observation emerging from the interviews was the depthof expectation for the subsidies among affected businesses. In early June, 2011, an
early stage of recovery, the author’s interviews with the owners of marine productfactories, local bankers, secretariats of the local chamber of commerce, as well as
the administrative officials in the affected municipalities of Miyako, Yamada, Otsuchi
and Kamaichi, revealed a commonly-held thought that the national government should
extend quicker and more substantial subsidies to directly stimulate the affected
enterprises, while disdaining the special financial measures meant for the “avoidanceof double debts,” which had been introduced since the first supplementary budget
in early May, 2011. In the author’s interviews in late July through early August (seeTable-3), soon after the administrative decision on the first batch of SME Group
Subsidies, an intensified complaint, or even rage against the national government
was evident because of the smallness of subsidies, around a few tens of million yen
per affected enterprise, which although sounding quite large, was actually a few
times smaller than the expectation held in the affected business circles. This anger
pushed the national government to increase the total volume of subsidies, as well as
the prefectural governments to admit the increased cap of distribution to individual
business, but complaints did not cease concerning the limited access to the subsidies.
The author’s series of interviews in December 2011, February 2011, and March2012 with affected retailers at temporary shops as well as the heads of chambersof commerce identified an intensive call for the subsidies to be extended to thecommercial sector, in addition to the previous implementation focusing on manufacturing industries. This expectation has, however, repeatedly been frustrated becauseof the delay of land-use planning for town recovery. The results of 5th distribution of
SME Group Subsidy unofficially showed in June and officially finalized in August, 2012
revealed that only slightly-affected shopping associations which already had started
reconstruction on the original location could successfully get access to the subsidies,91

Livelihood Support for the Early Recovery in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

while seriously affected groups located in the designated “disaster risk areas” hadno other choice but to wait until the finalization of land-use planning. An ironic factthat the author observed throughout the fieldwork was the controversial reality thatthe more the seriously affected business groups cried out for subsidies, the more
subsidies were being distributed to the lesser affected groups, as a result of theaforementioned extraordinary delay of land-use planning in deeply affected areas.
Table-3: Evaluation of Livelihood Support Measures by Different Categories of AffectedGroupsCategories of Serious Damage to Livelihoods
Livelihood
Fishery
Marine Product Downstream
Employees
Loss
Supports
Limited access
Limited access
Employment
for primary
to ad hoc
to ad hoc
protective
industries under measures except measures except measures
Law on Fiscal
for Temporary
for Temporary
Support in Mega BusinessBusiness
Disasters
Facilities
Facilities
Housing
Loss

Light Damage to No Damage toLivelihood
Livelihood

EntireDamage to
Housing

Various ad hoc
measures for SME
support (SMEGroup Subsidies,etc.)▸ strong callfor subsidies tolivelihood▸ unavailabilityof ad hocmeasures▸ strong callfor subsidies tolivelihood▸ unavailabilityof ad hocmeasures▸ strong callfor subsidies tolivelihood▸ basicallysatisfied▸ call forincreased amountof subsidies▸ basicallysatisfied▸ strong callfor subsidies tolivelihood▸ Complaint
against housing
support systemcompelling
dismantling▸ unavailabilityof ad hocmeasures▸ strong callfor subsidies tolivelihood▸ Complaint
against housing
support systemcompelling
dismantling▸ unavailabilityof ad hocmeasures▸ strong callfor subsidies tolivelihood▸ Complaint
against housing
support systemcompelling
dismantling▸ call forincreasedamount ofsubsidies▸ complaint
againsthousing
supportsystemcompelling
dismantling▸ call forincreased amountof subsidies▸ complaint
against housing
support systemcompelling
dismantling▸ complaint
against housing
support systemcompelling
dismantling

No Damage ▸ strong callto Housing for subsidies to▸ unavailabilityof ad hocmeasures▸ strong callfor subsidies tolivelihood▸ unavailabilityof ad hocmeasures▸ strong callfor subsidies tolivelihood▸ basicallysatisfied▸ call forincreased amountof subsidies▸ basicallysatisfied(multiple
supports areavailable)
Half Damage
to Housing(Supports
unavailable
unlessdismantlingof half
damagedhousing)(New focus
for social
welfare)livelihood(Summary of the Author’s interview as of July-August 2011)

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Second, in contrast to the intense calls for more subsidies, the scarcity of theutilization of special financial measures is remarkable, despite their highly concessional substance in comparison to similar measures adopted following the HanshinAwaji Earthquake. Though the reported volume of the special lending scheme isexpanding at first glance, the author learned in interview with and the data obtained
from the officials at the Japan Finance Cooperation, both the micro business unit andthe SME unit in Tokyo and Morioka in August and December, 2011, that the majorityof reported lending consisted of loans to “indirectly-affected” enterprises nationwide,with only a slight portion of them being utilized inside the GEJET affected areas,
except for those enterprises which obtained the SME Group Subsidy and therefore
needed loans to supplement the uncovered 1/4 portion of recovery investment. On
the other hand, as for the implementation of the special scheme for “avoidance of
double debts” through the debt purchase by the Organizations for Industrial Recovery
Assistance to suspend the old debt repayments up to fifteen years, the whole such
scheme almost lacked recognition among the affected business circle, with merely atotal of 10 cases on track for debt purchase out of a few hundred consultations duringnine-month operation in Iwate Prefecture by June 2012, according to the author’sinterviews in Morioka in December 2011 and June 2012 to the officials in charge at
the Iwate Center for Industrial Recovery Consultation specially established in October
2011 for the implementation of such scheme. The author’s interviews with the leadersof chambers of commerce in the municipalities of Miyako, Yamada, and Kamaishi aswell as bankers at local financial organizations, conducted in August 2011, December
2011, and June 2012, supported the assumption that the affected business circles
were indifferent to any financial scheme, no matter how large the concessional terms,
as long as they had access to subsidies as a means to cover existing debt reduction
and new investments.
Third reason for criticism was that the implemented measures left a group ofsmall-sized, self-employed entrepreneurs who have neither access to the subsidies
nor the financial measures. Most of the interviewed officials at the chambers ofcommerce confessed that what they could suggest to small-sized entrepreneurs
was only to negotiate with bankers for temporary rescheduling of existing debts,
since they knew that the chance was miniscule for these small businesses to obtain

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subsidies and therefore very small as well for obtaining new lending which often
accompanied the subsidies. In fact, interviewed local bankers insisted that theiroperation should concentrate on lending to enterprises which successfully obtained
the SME Group Subsidies, according to their philosophy that a local bank should not
be required to take the primary policy role of bailing out disaster-affected SMEs,
otherwise a financial systemic risk.
In the author’s questionnaire conducted in February 2012, answered by 35
small-scale retailers who had just started operations at the temporary businessfacilities provided by the Organization for Small-Medium Enterprises and Regional
Innovation in the municipalities of Miyako, Yamada and Otsuchi, the financial difficulties resulted from limited access either to subsidies and financial measures
were identified (Kaneko 2012a). Namely, 30 of the total 35 answers emphasized
the difficulty of making profits in an operation at the temporary business facilities,
as they needed initial capital investments as well as operation capital but basicallyneither of which was supported by any subsidies or financial measures. 24 answers
admitted their ignorance on the special financial measures provided by governmental
institutions. 17 answers complained about the difficulty of obtaining finance though
they repeatedly tried to negotiate with banks. 12 answers referred to the loss ofsales counterparts during the prolonged suspension period for recovery. 11 answers
complained about the scarcity of and the disparity of access to information. 25
answers concluded that the fundamental cause of every difficulty must be, after all,the delay of land-use planning for recovery.
Base on this evidence, the author contends that the ad hoc measures originallymeant for the support of the most seriously affected enterprises with a special needfor concessional assistance, have changed in their nature, in the process of administrative implementation, into the old-fashioned industrial policy directed toward theencouragement of core industries in each regional economy based on the size of
employment and production. A consequence of this change is the desperation of themost seriously affected and most vulnerable type of small-sized businesses, whose
applications to the subsidies are repeatedly rejected because of the very reason thatthey are located in the most seriously affected areas where the land-use planning fortown recovery is in delay, and whose applications for financial measures are rejected国 際 協 力 論 集94

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as well because of the lack of governmental risk-taking via subsidies. If not for thedelay of land-use planning, promptly introduced ad hoc measures could have mademore sense.

Ⅳ．Lessons for Effective Livelihood Supports
１． Streamlining Policy Thoughts on Livelihood Support
Based on the author’s findings in the above sections on the implementation ofexisting law and ad hoc measures for livelihood support adopted in the post-GEJET
recovery phase, a few lessons can be induced for reference by other countries. First,
there is a need for streamlining policy thought for livelihood support, in order toavoid confusion on the reach and degree of public roles in a disaster.
An extreme stance often heard in regard to livelihood support for disaster
affected businesses is a simple denial of public aid which can create moral hazards
and detrimental to the self-reliance of business entities which should assume therisk of doing business in dangerous areas by paying higher insurance premiums or
else.

12

In contrast to this, another extreme is the claim for the full extent of public

aid to business entities, contending that the government should be responsible forthe tort liability on the failure of protecting private properties, particularly the ones
13

meaningful for the national economy, from a disaster . Though the former seems torepresent a neo-liberalist philosophy or a strict capitalism, and the latter an interventionist view of industrial protection, there is a twist that a neo-liberalist preference ofthe private law (tort law) to the administrative regulations can constitute a theoreticalbasis to claim governmental compensations on a tort liability (Landes and Posner1984). The former shows relevance to the previous implementation of the Law on
Disaster Relief in Japan based on the ministerial general standard to set a narrow
range denying monetary reliefs for those who lost livelihood. However, the recent
implementation of the Japanese disaster relief system shows a process of change inthe opposite direction from strict capitalism. In addition to the existing special laws
allowing monetary relief for households having lost the primary income earner and/or housing, as well as livelihood support for those who make living in the primaryLivelihood Support for the Early Recovery in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

95

industries, a plenty of ad hoc measures have accumulated such as the employment
protection measures since the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and applied in the GEJET.
Given this trend of expanding public aid, there seems to be no reason to deny anadditional extension for the protection of the most vulnerable type of commercial andindustrial entities.
On the other hand, an interventionist call for governmental subsidies isproblematic when moral hazards are induced to the effect impeding the selfprotective measures against disasters. However, a controversial tendency observedin the implementation of the post-GEJET ad hoc measures has been the doublestandards in which an abundance of interventionist’s subsidies are distributed to theeconomic entities having loud voices, while a new-liberalistic thought of self-relianceis often referred to as the theoretical basis for denying support to the group of mostseriously affected, small-scale entrepreneurs.
Even if we cannot apply either the model of pure capitalism or pure interventionism in a modern socio-economy, we still need to design with consistency,
considering the balance between public aid and self-reliance so as to better achieve
the goal of disaster management. The goal of disaster relief is, in the short run, theprotection of the lives, limbs and properties of a nation’s people (as envisaged in
Art.1 of the Basic Law on Disaster Response in Japan), but in the long run, it should
contribute to the ultimate goal of the reduction of disaster in a cost effective way
14

while avoiding moral hazards.

A prioritizing of public aid should be established forthe both consideration of short-term and long-term goals (Table 4). Those who aremost seriously damaged in terms of the basis of livelihood should be assisted first in
the view of the short-term goal, as long as there are limited risks of moral hazards inthe long-run, given the limited access to pre-disaster insurance scheme at economically accessible premium and/or limited degree of predictability. Direct intervention
by ad hoc public aid such as the SME Group Subsidy should only be justified for themost seriously damaged type of self-employed businesses which have no other choice
but to call for subsidies, whereas the medium-large enterprises which have adequate
access to market-based finance should have been offered only the special financial
measures, such as the special lending and debt-restructuring schemes.
In terms of the risk of moral hazards in public aid in the context of developing国 際 協 力 論 集96

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economies, a reference should be made to the lessons from Asian Currency and
Financial Crisis in 1997. Though we cannot make a simple comparison between anatural disaster and a financial crisis, they are related in the sense that the legal
design for supporting affected businesses largely depends on the question of whether
the government or the private sector should be liable for the damages. The prescription given by the IMF in the Asian Crisis shifted by 180 degree from its initial strict
accusation against the private sector of the outcomes of overly high risk investments
and exploitation of minority investors, to the later rescue packages for the protectionof private sector which in turn deemed as “victims” in the crisis (IMF 1999, Kaneko
2008, 2009). Bankruptcy law amendment succeeded this shift, so as to assist
corporate recovery by leaving it in the hands of existing managers who were initiallydeemed as those liable for mismanagement. Then, government-led debt restructuring
schemes followed, promoting governmental purchase of non-performing loans fromthe private sector. The result was a prolonged economic disturbance. Similarly innatural disasters, we should be careful not to be trapped in a campaign exaggerating
the governmental role to rescue “victims” without a clear definition.
Table-4 ： Priority of Public Aid to Affected Business Entities by the   

Degree of Hardship (disaster relief as short-term goal) and the Risk ofMoral Hazards (disaster reduction as long-term goal)
Low Risk of Moral Hazard

High Risk of Moral Hazard(Low expectation of disaster preventive(High expectation of disaster preventive
measures; limited disaster predictability; measures; disaster predictability; medium
small-scale; limited access to funds, etc.) -large scale; good access to funds, etc.)

Special Financial Measures
Serious Damage Highly Concessional Public Aids
to the Livelihood (e.g. SME Group Subsidy ++ Special (e.g. Double-Debt Avoidance Scheme++ Special Lending)Lending)
Basis
Self-reliance
Limited Damage Special Financial Measures
to the Livelihood (e.g. Double-Debt Avoidance Scheme (e.g. Disaster Insurance)+ +Special Lending)
Basis（Summary by Author）

２．Catalytic Role of Market-Friendly Public Institution
Second, judged from the tendency of government-led implementation of

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livelihood supports in the GEJET to incline toward industrial protection, even at theexpense of budgets which should have supported the most seriously affected groupof businesses, and the tendency of market entities such as enterprises and bankers
to depend on governmental intervention, there is a need, revealed by both thesefailures of the state and the market, for certain neutral institutions that can be freefrom “politics.” A possible approach for the avoidance of political intervention might
be to shift the responsible agency for implementing the livelihood support from thegovernment to professional consultants.
A reference can be made in this regard to the experience in the recovery
process from the Canterbury Earthquake which took place in Christchurch, New
Zealand in 2011, in which the City Council of Christchurch City in cooperation with
the CERA (Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Agency), a specially established agency
for leading the recovery planning, quickly took up a proposal made by the local
chamber of commerce and introduced a unique voucher system in which affectedbusinesses could obtain professional consultation for individual business recovery
15

planning by selected public accountants and lawyers without payment of charge.

Although we have to avoid an easy comparison between two countries having
extremely different systems for disaster relief, one deeply rooted in the disasterinsurance system for self-reliance, while the other heavily based on post-disasterpublic aid, one thing they have in common is the need for a good business recovery
plan, regardless of whether funding is obtained from the financial market or publicaid. The procedural flow of two systems, however, moves in opposite directions, inthat the affected businesses in Christchurch first should visit the consultant for abusiness plan to be the basis for all following recovery financing, while the affectedbusinesses in Japan are expected to go first to the governmental window to apply for
subsidies, to be followed by the financial schemes of either rescheduling, write-offs,
or the application for debt suspension schemes.
If this government-centered procedure in Japan for accessing livelihood support
could be reversed, making the initial consultation with professional consultants thefirst in the financial rescue schemes, we might be able to avoid the politics inherent
in the governmental policy consideration. Another alternative possibility might
be to increase the role of the Industrial Recovery Consultation Center which was

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established by the Agency for Small-Medium Enterprises in each affected prefecturein the recovery process from the GEJET. Given the experienced human resources
gathered nationwide to serve at these Centers, they are capable of taking charge ofthe central management of livelihood support, starting from the consultation for andthe objective evaluation of the individual business plans of affected businesses, which
would then receive an objective assessment for the most suitable measures, including(i) concessional approach centering on public aid such as the SME Group Subsidy,(ii) financial approach such as special lending and double-debt avoidance schemes, or(iii) intermediary approach such as a combination of both subsidies and various typesof private investment funds.
If we are able to see a successful outcome from such a catalytic role ofthe professional consultants at the Industrial Recovery Consultation Center in the
succeeding phases in the GEJET, as a unique attempt to tackle the failures of boththe state and the market in facing a mega disaster, this experience of a publicprivate partnership for livelihood support through a market-friendly public institution
could be a better instructive model for developing countries than the purely-market〈Government〉
Subsidies〈Intermediary〉
Fund Raising〈Market〉
Special Finance

⇧

⇧

⇧

〈Industrial Recovery Consultation Centers〉
Business Plan → Objective Decision for Supporting Approach⇧⇧

Consultants at Chamber of Commerce etc. in Affected Areas

⇧

⇧

⇧

⇧

Affected Businesses(By Author)

Figure-1：Catalytic Role of a Market-Friendly Public Institution
in Post-Disaster Livelihood Supports (Image)Livelihood Support for the Early Recovery in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami

99

approach as taken in New Zealand, given the realities in these countries of both thecorruption in the government sector and limited market resources.
３．Governance enabling a Linkage between Livelihood Supports and Early Recovery
Early recovery is a new notion that has come to prominence in the field of
disaster studies, often defined as an idea for linking the victim aid for humanitarian
purposes in the early stage of emergency response to the succeeding stages ofrehabilitation and recovery, in order to enable early reconstruction of self-relianceamong individual victims and the sustainable functioning of local governments (IRP/
UNDP/ISDR 2008, IRP/UNDP/ISDR 2010,etc.). The GEJET has offered many lessons
for this concept of early recovery, especially regarding the difficulties in creating
linkage between the early stage of victim aid and the succeeding recovery phase.
The aforementioned gap between the narrowed reach of livelihood support under the
Law on Disaster Relief implemented by the welfare ministry and the abundance of
SME group subsidies implemented by the industrial ministry is a typical example ofthe difficulties.
Another lesson on the challenge to early recovery in the GEJET is the poor
linkage between the temporary business facilities and permanent economic recovery.
Although the provision of temporary business facilities has almost been only available
support for those seriously affected businesses in tsunami-inundated areas whichhave basically no access to the SME Group Subsidy or special financial schemes asaforementioned, this measure has faced tremendous difficulties since the very earlystage when the Organization for Small-Medium Enterprises and Regional Innovation
publicly announced its introduction as early as April 11, 2011. The actual implementation was delayed for months following the announcement mainly because of adifficulty in obtaining suitable lands for the promised temporary business facilities.
Theoretically due to the geographic characteristics of affected regions where flat land
is extremely limited except for the coastal tsunami-inundated areas, and practically
due to budgetary considerations of the municipalities which wanted to avoid paying
rent to lease private land, the affected municipalities loosened the initial restriction
on the usage of inundated lands and opted to allocate municipally-owned public lands(such as public parks and play-grounds at public schools) in inundated areas for the国 際 協 力 論 集100

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purpose of constructing temporary business facilities. Accordingly, the question of
how to deal with these temporary facilities in the longer run in the stage of town
recovery planning for inundated areas arose.
Being the only available livelihood support for deeply affected small-scalebusinesses, for the purpose of providing effective livelihood support, temporary
business facilities should be maintained, until the ultimate completion of town
recovery plan when the land-use restriction is lifted and the transition to thepermanent commercial activities are made possible. For the purpose of expediting
the town recovery plan, on the other hand, temporary business facilities sitting in thecenter of inundated areas where new development is expected, are nothing but an
obstacle.
An after-the-fact learned lesson is that a recovery planning should have been
deliberated in each municipality prior to the disaster. As has been attempted by the
Tokyo Metropolitan Government since 2000 under the Basic Ordinance for Disaster
Management as amended in 2003, pre-disaster planning can prepare for better
coordination of land use to facilitate effective transition from temporary facilities forhousing and businesses to permanent town recovery. Although the Cabinet Office hadpromoted seminars and researches to encourage the pre-disaster recovery planningby municipalities (Cabinet Office 2010b, etc.), essentially no such attempts had been
carried out in the GEJET-hit region.
In consideration of this limitation of municipalities in both pre-disaster planningand post-disaster management of land allocations, the prefectural government
should have taken a more positive role to encourage the early recovery. Particularly
amid the intense confusion in the phase of emergency response in a mega disaster,
the present system of disaster governance in Japan is unreasonable, in virtuallyconcentrating every administrative burden on the affected municipalities in regard toland use arrangements for all temporary housing, temporary business facilities, andpermanent town planning. This burden is often beyond the capacity of affected municipalities which have incurred tremendous human and asset losses in a mega disaster.
A possible alternative for post-disaster governance could be an increased role ofmiddle tier government, according to the spirit of the Law on Disaster Relief in Japanthat makes the provision of disaster relief a legally delegated task for the prefectural

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government (Art.2) to be supplemented by the municipal governments (Art.31). If
the prefectural government should take a primary responsibility in the arrangement
for land allocation for temporary housings as well as temporary business facilities,
preferably in neighborhoods in non-affected municipalities which have the capacity
to facilitate back-ups, the affected municipalities would be able to concentrate on the
deliberations for long-term recovery planning. By the prefectural leadership creatinga wide-area network, affected people evacuated to temporary housing and businessfacilities in neighboring municipalities would be able to gather together for theintensive elaboration on recovery planning, enabling the early recovery.
Governance in the recovery phase has been given less focus compared to itsrole in the phase of emergency response. However, there are many relevant issues tobe studied for successful early recovery, especially in a mega disaster, such as rolesharing between government of different levels, budget allocation, and participation
by affected communities (see IRP/UNDP/ISDR 2009; IRP 2011). Given the new trendof law-making for emergency risk management in developing countries, covering
the issues of governance for both the phases of emergency response and recovery,
the GEJET may have much relevance to their problems. Especially, the struggles
in the post-GEJET recovery process for a new mode of governance encompassing
local autonomy and participation, may include lessons for developing countries

Table-5：Alternative for Administrative Work-Sharing between Temporary
Facilities and Permanent Recovery
Temporary Facilities
Housing
Recovery

Permanent Facilities

Affected Municipalities
Provincial Government : Coordination for
Horizontal network in neighborhood nonaffected municipalities

Affected Municipalities
Livelihood Provincial Government : Coordination for
Recovery ・ Temporary Shops ～ location next to the
Temporary Housing Areas
・Temporary-type Factories ～ inneighborhood municipality
・Permanent-type Temporary Factories ～near original location(Proposed by the Author)

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which seek a balanced institutional design between the international vector toward
the centralized model of disaster management and the local calls for autonomy andparticipation.
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13 Journal of Legal Studies, pp.417-34.
-National Land Agency of Japan (1993) The Research Report on the Analysis of Recovery Measures as of the
fiscal year of Heisei-11: Manual for Recovery Management for Tsunami Disaster, Agency for Land of Japan (inJapanese).
-Posner, R. (2004) Catastrophe, Risk and Response, Oxford University Press.
-Priest, G. (1996) “The Government, the Market, and the Problem of Catastrophic Loss,” Journal of Risk
and Uncertainty 12, pp.219-37.
-Reconstruction Design Council in Response to the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011) “Towards Reconstruction: Hope beyond the Disaster,” available at the website of the Cabinet Secretariat of Japan: http://
www.cas.go.jp/jp/fukkou/english/pdf/report20110625.pdf.
-Socio-Economic Research Institute at the Cabinet Office of Japan (2009) Research Report on the Disaster
Response Policy Reflecting Economic Viewpoints, available at www.esri.go.jp (in Japanese).
-Yamazaki, E. (2011) “Issues of Victim Aid in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake,” Houritsu Jihou,
Vol.84, No.12, (in Japanese).

Notes
1 In Miyagi Prefecture, the original two months’ land-use restriction under the Law on Construction
Codes, Art.84 was extended to 8 months, and then shifted partly to the two years’ restriction under the
Law on Special Measures for Disaster-affected Town Areas for the purpose of land rearrangements forland-filling projects, and partly to the permanent land-use restriction under the Law on Construction Codes,
Art.39 for the purpose of higher-land relocation. In Iwate Prefecture, although the prefectural government
first envisaged the permanent land-use restriction under the Law on Construction Codes, Art.39 for the
purpose of higher-land relocation, the affected municipalities did not enact the ordinance necessary forsuch land-use restriction but instead merely informally requested land-users’ cooperation via administrative guidance.
2 The Ministry of Land and Transportation (Department of Cities and Department of Housing) issued aguideline for the enhancement of the consent of local citizens in June 2012 (Ministry of Land and Transportation, 2012b).
3 The subsidized menus known as the “Centers for Tsunami-Recovery Projects” envisaged in the Law
on Town-Planning initiated by the Ministry of Land and Transportation in December 2011 is limited tothe construction of public buildings only such as facilities for exhibitions, social welfare activities, andregional recovery projects. Although many of the affected-municipalities hold expectation for the use of the
SME Group Subsidies of the Agency for Small-Medium Enterprises as well as the Subsidized Projects for
Building of Marine Industry Base by the Agency for Marine Industries, there is an apparent gap between
the original policy goals and the intention of affected municipalities.
4 According to the summary of the basis for town planning for each affected municipality preparedby the Ministry of Land and Transportation (Ministry of Land and Transportation 2012a), the height oflevees seems set at the level capable of protecting the industrially concentrated areas, such that, for

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example, the standard level of levees in Miyako City is set at 10.4-meters which is capable of protecting
Kuwagasaki (marine products and ship building industries) hit by a 9-meter tsunami, and Fujiwara (marine
products industry concentrated area) hit by a 5-meter tsunami, while in short for the housing areas suchas Takahama hit by a 15-tsunami and Kanehama hit by a 13-meter tsunami. As well, the standard levelof levee in Otsuchi bay set at 14.5-meter can protect Asaka (marine product industry concentration) hit
by a 12.7-meter tsunami, but the level in the Kiri-Kiri coast next to Otsuchi is set at 12.8-meter which isincapable of protecting this housing area hit by a 16.1-meter tsunami.
5 Interviews in July 2011, October 2011, December 2011, February 2012, June 2012, July 2012 with local
retailers as well as the officers of the chambers of commerce in Miyako City, Yamada Town, and Kamaishi
City in Iwate Prefecture.
6 Interviews in February 2012, June 2012, July 2012 with several small-scale local hotel owners in
Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture.
7 See the General Standards for the Extent, Method, Terms, and the Actual Compensation under the Law
on Disaster Relief (2000 version) issued by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
8 See Cabinet Office 2010 at p.viii-ix.
9 There is no definition of the “destruction of housing” given by any law, although this is the only
essential basis of payment of the monetary support under the Law on Support for Reconstruction ofDisaster Victims’ Living, as well as the basis of distribution of the Red Cross Compensations. It is merely
an administrative custom developed in the operation of disaster affected municipalities since the 1995
Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake to issue a sheet of paper named “certificate of disaster damage” which refers
to either category of “entire destruction of housing,” “large destruction of housing,” and ”half destructionof housing,” based on a post-disaster on-site survey made by municipal officers following occasionalguidelines by the Cabinet Office. Despite this merely customary nature of “certificate of disaster damage,”
it constitutes the basis of all lawful rights for the access to the disaster reliefs. See for the details, Ikuta.
2008
10 In the author’s interview with a total of 47 victims at the temporary housing complexes in Miyako City
(Kuwagasaki), Yamada Town (Nagasaki) and Kamaishi city (Nakazuma) as of June 2011 when the shift fromthe phase of emergency response to the phase of recovery was appealed by the government, 37 answeredthat they had incurred losses to livelihood.
11 In the same interviews referred to in the supra note 8, out of the total 47 answers, 19 answers stateda strong antipathy toward public aid unreasonably focusing on those who lost housing. Especially, 14
answers among the 37 persons who incurred livelihood losses, reported that they had no other choice but
to dismantle their houses evaluated as “half-damaged” for the purpose of fulfilling the condition to obtainmonetary support under the Law on Support for Reconstruction of Disaster Victims’ Living. This choice
to dismantle half-damaged houses was based on their expectation of an ultimate fiscal support for the
relocation to higher land, which would necessitate the house dismantling sooner or later, it later turned
out, however, that their expectation was denied as the government-led recovery plan only extend fiscal
supports to limited areas. See Kaneko 2011 for details.
12 The law and economic literature is critical of public aid. See e.g. Epstein (1996), Priest (1996),
Kunreuther (1996), Posner (2004).
13 See e.g., on the question of governmental responsibility after Hurricane Katarina, Daniels, Kettle andKunreuther (2006).
14 The law and economics literature would describe the same policy goals in a different way such as“welfare maximization through the minimization of accident costs” at the lowest possible costs and without
unnecessary side effects such as disincentives for prevention. See e.g., Faure (2007) at p.341.
15 Information obtained in the author’s interviews with the officials in charge of economic recovery at
the CERA as of January, 2012.