Author: Junko Otani: Osaka University, Graduate School of Human Sciences

Setting up the project
My focus was research on older people in urban areas who are poor and have no functioning family. This is a group that will be of increasing concern for the future in Japan and many other countries (Wilson, 2000: 117). My study population lost their homes in the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe, Japan, and were repeatedly relocated to various types of housing schemes in the following years. The primary research methods were media analysis of TV programmes and broadsheet newspapers, a reanalysis of the Hyogo Health Surveys, and ethnographic research at elected Kasetsu (temporary shelter housing: TSH) and Fukko Jutaku (public reconstruction housing: PRH) compounds in central and suburban Kobe. The focus of the research is the processes of reconstruction for older people after the earthquake, with special reference to housing and community work.
For more information on the earthquake, go to http://www.kanadas.com/kobe-quake/ , and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_earthquake.

The above not only set out the research but also gave grounds to support it, saying that this research population is a model of the future ageing society in Japan. It is an increasingly important group of people, and is relatively new on this mass scale.

By looking at the highly age biased community of TSH created after the Kobe Earthquake and the following stage of PRH, this research follows the processes of reconstruction for older people after the earthquake with special reference to housing and community work.

My fieldwork at TSH was carried out in 1998 to early 1999. The first set of media data was collected in January 1999 at the week of the fourth anniversary of the Earthquake. Then my fieldwork at PRH was carried out in the following months. Then the second set of media data was collected in January 2000 at the week of the fifth anniversary of the Earthquake. This allowed me to focus first on media, then ethnographic fieldwork, and then back to media. Also this allowed me to observe the communities in my ethnographic fieldwork while the media was filming to prepare for the 2000 wave broadcasting.

Reanalysis of survey data provided the background context of my study population and also indicated how government was seeing the needs of my study population. I was proposing this research as my PhD and at the time, the medical school (LSHTM) still tended not to accept research with small sample which is sufficient when design a qualitative approach. Using survey data was also a help to convince my committee who asked a question of generalization although I explained that my research was not aiming generalization.

Most interviewees were those who were not in my ethnography sites. A few interviewees were those in the sites such as the chief of the self-governing body. It was a courtesy to do an interview to them, recognising them as a leader of the community when entering there and they expected me to do an interview with them.

I used a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative approaches. By doing secondary analysis of the Hyogo survey data, I examined the changes that the different surveys show. By sampling the media, I showed the main foci of public attention, how their views changed and how what they emphasised or presented changed. The media is an important part of my research in the Japanese context. Older people, especially older people living alone, received considerable attention. I also sampled three sites in terms of what was happening on the ground and conducted discourse analysis.

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