ABSTRACT
This chapter examines issues surrounding the subjective well-being and life satisfaction of (former) disaster volunteers in northeast Japan as phenomena closely related to an ongoing diversification of lifestyles, individualization of life courses, and the renegotiation of work-life balance in contemporary Japanese post-growth society. Those interviewees who made a clean-cut break with their former regular employment seem more content with their lives than the volunteers who continue to struggle in their office jobs, despite the lingering sense of precarity. Volunteer activities included cleaning private photos stained by the tsunami, helping to carry out local festivals such as the Tanabata Matsuri in Rikuzen Takata or local Shinto festivities in Ogatsu, near Ishinomaki. Restaurant staff include a local woman in her early sixties, a local in his late twenties, and several former disaster volunteers who have also chosen to remain and work at other jobs in the creative industry.
