Disaster Victims
Protection of disaster victims in Japan and China
Providing relief to the victims of floods,earthquakes, fires, crop failures and other disasters has long been one of the most prominent tasks of the benevolent rulers in China and Japan (Amelung 2000; Garon 1997), which, in late Imperial China, was dealt with in a highly sophisticated rule-based way (Will 1990). While disasters may constitute a challenge to a government’s legitimacy anywhere, this is particularly the case in disaster-prone East Asia.
Dealing with disasters thus has become a symbolically-charged question, which has been instrumentalized by governments - for example, during the Yangzi floods of 1998, when the People’s Liberation Army was framed as the saviour of the suffering people – as well as by its detractors – as in the debate on collapsed school buildings following the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Disasters often trigger voluntary civil action. The 1995 Hanshin earthquake made the term “volunteer” (in Japanese borantiâ) a household name. Feng Xiaogang’s 2010 popular Chinese film Aftershock, recollecting the events of the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan and relating them to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake,
provides another vivid example.
This confronts the state with the question of whether everybody, including foreign and religious groups, should be allowed to assist. After the 1995 Hanshin earthquake, the Japanese government at first refused to provide any financial aid, whereas, embarrassingly, organized crime syndicates were among the most efficient providers of relief. In dealing with disasters, examples of the “protectification” and marginalization of disaster victims by state authorities (e.g., in the case of Minamata [Fujikura 2007]; the collapse of the Banqiao dam in China 1975 has not even been officially acknowledged [Yi Si 1998]) come into contrast with the numerous examples where disasters have served as a catalyst for institutionalizing new forms of protection. Among others, the successful mobilization for the Law on Livelihood Rehabilitation of Natural Disaster Victims (enacted in Japan in 1998), and - following Fukushima - the recent establishment of a Dispute Settlement Center for Nuclear Damage (Idei 2012) can be cited here. The two case studies will look into disaster relief both from a historical perspective and with view to its contemporary implementation.
