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

Reporting the project
I conducted research as my PhD thesis (in English) and later I worked on it to publish as a book in Japanese, and further in Chinese and English. The recovery process after the Great Hanshin (Osaka-Kobe) Earthquake provided the opportunity for experimentation in community development for a highly aged society of older people with non-functioning families. This is an increasingly important group in modern society, as the population ages. Kobe therefore received attention as a future model of Japanese society. This research looked at the elderly survivors of the Kobe Earthquake, especially in terms of community development where a large proportion of residents are older people and, furthermore, older people living alone in high-rise apartment buildings of Public Reconstruction Housing (PRH) and, in comparison, with the hutted apartments of Temporary Shelter Housing (TSH). The thesis has not solved all the debates regarding community development for a highly aged society with a large proportion of older people living alone, for policy analysis or as an operational framework. However, key lessons can be drawn from the exploratory micro-study research conducted in the context of Japan.

Quantitative analysis of media data provided evidence to show the actual length of the time spent on specific topics such as the focus on older survivors. It showed the changes and shift in focus over the years.

From the analysis of ethnographic field work data, my research supported the theory that local community support is needed for government officials to work in a community and my methods showed the variations in local support.

This study showed that one set of myths about temporary shelter housing was only partly true and that public reconstruction housing is far from a simple solution to the problem of rehousing survivors. Case studies of media data produced evidence of loneliness and Kodukushi and showed how these topics were built up from very little into new facts and new aspects of culture. In addition to the media discourse, analysis of my fieldwork observation data enabled me to produce an alternative discourse on these issues. As the analysis of media highlighted, the sense of isolation and loneliness was prevalent in my fieldwork sites, both at TSH and PRH, but it was partly because of the timing of TSH closing down after the peak of their activity, and of PRH starting up a new community. In PRH there was more of a forward looking discourse but only a longer time frame would have allowed any conclusions over whether loneliness would decrease over time.

The conclusion drawn from this evidence was that disasters are long drawn out events for vulnerable older people, especially those without money or families. Official statistics and the media make their own interpretations of what is going on, and the workers on the ground reproduce many of these views and some old prejudices of their own. Policy implications of this study's findings are considered in my publications in Japanese, Chinese and English.

Back to Project Home Page