ABSTRACT
Japan forms one arc of the infamous Pacific Ring of Fire, the seismically most active portion of the Earth's crust and a region marked by frequent and highly destructive earthquakes and their consequences. A major earthquake, the Great Hansin Earthquake, struck Japan in January 1995, and between that quake and the Great Tohoku Earthquake in March 2011, a total of fifteen quakes of magnitude 6.5 or stronger were recorded along the Japanese portion of the Ring of Fire. As with Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005, the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake generated an outpouring of local social science research focused mainly on the devastation of the immediate aftermath and on long-term recovery issues. The 2011 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed 44 of the village's 52 homes but only caused four deaths in the village mainly because of rapid evacuation.
