ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concept of social sustainability in Japan in the aftermath of the disasters of March 11, 2011. The Japanese government recognized decades ago that a declining birth rate and an aging population would cause financial pressure on social institutions. With this reality in mind, the consolidations of villages, towns, and cities as well as agricultural and fishing cooperatives, took place in large numbers (Delaney, 2015b; Rausch, 2012; Rausch, 2015). Rural and coastal communities are especially stressed with a higher average age of the population. Additionally, pressure is felt most particularly in fishing communities where their active population decreased through retirements by almost 47 percent in less than two decades between 1993 and 2008 (Popescu and Oguchi, 2013).
