Ryo Morimoto
Biographic Data
| ID | 174584 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ryo Morimoto |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ryo |
| FAMILY NAME | Morimoto |
| SIGNATURE | MORIMOTO R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7986-8109 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Anthropology of Human–Nuclear Relations: Toward the Humanization of the Nuclear Other
This review surveys historical and contemporary anthropological work on nuclear things and shifting human–nuclear relations. Confronting the paradox that nuclear phenomena are physically omnipresent yet inevitably mediated by politics, technoscience, and expertise, anthropologists have traced how states, experts, industries, and affected communities negotiate exposure, risk, safety, and responsibility within unequal power dynamics. Foundational e…
Radioactive Mosquito Bite and Its Surreal Life
The article explores the tensions between the state, science, and the lived experience among the residents in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima. The author proposes the analytics of the "surreal" to apprehend the incommensurable divide invisible radiation in society had produced between the state's technoscientific focus on making the radiation visible and people's diverse everyday experience of radiation in various aspects …
Tying Knots of En: An Ethnography among Uncertain Walls in Fukushima's Gray Zone in 2023
Twelve years after the TEPCO nuclear accident in coastal Fukushima, the newly revised compensation policy and the discharge of water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Station are threatening to produce social and political divisions among the residents in coastal Fukushima between scientific experts and lay public, and between countries. In a time of heightened societal divisions, what is the role of scholars? By sharing ethnographic s…
The potential of disaster digital archives in disaster education: The case of the Japan disasters digital archive (JDA) and its geo-location functions
Using the Japan Disasters Digital Archive (JDA) as an example, the present study examines how geo-location functions in disaster digital archives may contribute to disaster risk awareness. It focuses on the sites affected by or representing lessons learned from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), such as the tsunami inundated coastal areas or museums. The study tests the thesis that geo-located data in digital archives can enhance disast…
A Wild Boar Chase: Ecology of Harm and Half-Life Politics in Coastal Fukushima
This article explores how the Japanese state's radiation-centered approach to ecological redress in postfallout costal Fukushima impacts a local framework of relationality called en/縁. By ethnographically tracing encounters between humans and wild boars in the region through an ecosemiotic lens, the essay articulates the differences and tensions between en and the model of relationality that the government's decontamination policy enforces. In so…
Home Otherwise: Living Archives and Half-Life Politics in Post-Fallout Coastal Fukushima
While the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan forced residents out of their coastal Fukushima homes, transforming familiar ecologies into sites of estrangement, Naoko and neighbors remain invested in the material objects and spiritual relations of their houses, within and despite the logics of contamination. These desires to repair domestic livelihoods to nurture a sense of home (ie) and the idea of dying well (ii shinikata) challenge critical theorie…
Disasters Digitized
Message without a Coda: On the Rhetoric of Photographic Records
This article investigates the rhetoric of the photographic object in the context of the 3.11 disasters in Japan, where this particular object became essential for both commemorating the loss and communicating to future generations about the danger of a large-scale disaster. Through ethnography of the two different subcultures of photographic laboratory, the article documents various sign processes of the disaster-related photograph and argues tha…
Shaking grounds, unearthing palimpsests: Semiotic anthropology of disaster
This article will engage with the current disasters in Japan from the perspective of semiotic anthropology. Disaster seems to produce two moments of the sign: signa naturalia and signa data. The translation of the sign mirrors the architectonic of the signified of disaster, which is mediated by a token-level instantiation of signifiers that initially appears either absent or in excess. The conceptualization of disaster as a zero sign, that is, un…
A Wild Boar Chase: Ecology of Harm and Half-Life Politics in Coastal Fukushima
This article explores how the Japanese state's radiation-centered approach to ecological redress in postfallout costal Fukushima impacts a local framework of relationality called en/縁. By ethnographically tracing encounters between humans and wild boars in the region through an ecosemiotic lens, the essay articulates the differences and tensions between en and the model of relationality that the government's decontamination policy enforces. In so…
Home Otherwise: Living Archives and Half-Life Politics in Post-Fallout Coastal Fukushima
While the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan forced residents out of their coastal Fukushima homes, transforming familiar ecologies into sites of estrangement, Naoko and neighbors remain invested in the material objects and spiritual relations of their houses, within and despite the logics of contamination. These desires to repair domestic livelihoods to nurture a sense of home (ie) and the idea of dying well (ii shinikata) challenge critical theorie…
Shaking grounds, unearthing palimpsests: Semiotic anthropology of disaster
This article will engage with the current disasters in Japan from the perspective of semiotic anthropology. Disaster seems to produce two moments of the sign: signa naturalia and signa data. The translation of the sign mirrors the architectonic of the signified of disaster, which is mediated by a token-level instantiation of signifiers that initially appears either absent or in excess. The conceptualization of disaster as a zero sign, that is, un…
Shaking grounds, unearthing palimpsests: Semiotic anthropology of disaster
This article will engage with the current disasters in Japan from the perspective of semiotic anthropology. Disaster seems to produce two moments of the sign: signa naturalia and signa data. The translation of the sign mirrors the architectonic of the signified of disaster, which is mediated by a token-level instantiation of signifiers that initially appears either absent or in excess. The conceptualization of disaster as a zero sign, that is, un…
Message without a Coda: On the Rhetoric of Photographic Records
This article investigates the rhetoric of the photographic object in the context of the 3.11 disasters in Japan, where this particular object became essential for both commemorating the loss and communicating to future generations about the danger of a large-scale disaster. Through ethnography of the two different subcultures of photographic laboratory, the article documents various sign processes of the disaster-related photograph and argues tha…
Disasters Digitized
Home Otherwise: Living Archives and Half-Life Politics in Post-Fallout Coastal Fukushima
While the 2011 nuclear disaster in Japan forced residents out of their coastal Fukushima homes, transforming familiar ecologies into sites of estrangement, Naoko and neighbors remain invested in the material objects and spiritual relations of their houses, within and despite the logics of contamination. These desires to repair domestic livelihoods to nurture a sense of home (ie) and the idea of dying well (ii shinikata) challenge critical theorie…
The potential of disaster digital archives in disaster education: The case of the Japan disasters digital archive (JDA) and its geo-location functions
Using the Japan Disasters Digital Archive (JDA) as an example, the present study examines how geo-location functions in disaster digital archives may contribute to disaster risk awareness. It focuses on the sites affected by or representing lessons learned from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), such as the tsunami inundated coastal areas or museums. The study tests the thesis that geo-located data in digital archives can enhance disast…
A Wild Boar Chase: Ecology of Harm and Half-Life Politics in Coastal Fukushima
This article explores how the Japanese state's radiation-centered approach to ecological redress in postfallout costal Fukushima impacts a local framework of relationality called en/縁. By ethnographically tracing encounters between humans and wild boars in the region through an ecosemiotic lens, the essay articulates the differences and tensions between en and the model of relationality that the government's decontamination policy enforces. In so…
Radioactive Mosquito Bite and Its Surreal Life
The article explores the tensions between the state, science, and the lived experience among the residents in the aftermath of the 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima. The author proposes the analytics of the "surreal" to apprehend the incommensurable divide invisible radiation in society had produced between the state's technoscientific focus on making the radiation visible and people's diverse everyday experience of radiation in various aspects …
Tying Knots of En: An Ethnography among Uncertain Walls in Fukushima's Gray Zone in 2023
Twelve years after the TEPCO nuclear accident in coastal Fukushima, the newly revised compensation policy and the discharge of water at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Station are threatening to produce social and political divisions among the residents in coastal Fukushima between scientific experts and lay public, and between countries. In a time of heightened societal divisions, what is the role of scholars? By sharing ethnographic s…
The Anthropology of Human–Nuclear Relations: Toward the Humanization of the Nuclear Other
This review surveys historical and contemporary anthropological work on nuclear things and shifting human–nuclear relations. Confronting the paradox that nuclear phenomena are physically omnipresent yet inevitably mediated by politics, technoscience, and expertise, anthropologists have traced how states, experts, industries, and affected communities negotiate exposure, risk, safety, and responsibility within unequal power dynamics. Foundational e…
Sociology (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Risk Perception and Management (4 works) · Art (3 works) · Environmental ethics (3 works) · Aesthetics (2 works) · Anthropology (2 works)