ABSTRACT
Introduction The Great East Japan Earthquake struck the predominantly rural Tohoku region the hardest, and the subsequent tsunami devastated over 500 km of its Pacific coast. The number of deaths and injuries caused by the earthquake and the tsunami were modest compared to those resulting from similar geophysical events elsewhere in the world (Guha-Sapir et al. 2014). Nevertheless, the recent Japanese disaster produced one of the largest natural-disaster-induced economic losses in modern history (even without including politically contested damages from the nuclear accident as described in this chapter), ahead of the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, which hit heavily urbanized areas of the country. What made the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster so costly, of course, was the severe accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) (Rabl and Rabl 2013). A series of hydrogen explosions of the reactors resulted in the release of radioactive materials in extensive areas in eastern Japan, affecting most significantly the eastern part of Fukushima Prefecture and its adjacent areas. Radioactive contamination does not easily fit conventional categories of natural disasters (Guha-Sapir et al. 2012). In particular, the locations and populations affected by radioactive contamination are not easily determined by conventional guidelines for analyzing natural disasters, yet such information is essential in calculating economic damages and appropriate compensation. Consequently, determining the extent and magnitude of radioactive contamination has become a highly complex and politically charged issue in post-3.11 Japan.
