Harmonizing Cars and Humans in Japan's Era of Mass Automobility

In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, one cannot help but ask why Japanese authorities long promoted an ambitious nuclear program that included over fifty reactors spread all over one of the most seismically active geological zones in the world, vulnerable not only to earthquakes but also to devastating tsunamis. However, other technological systems have been adopted in Japan and elsewhere despite their inherent dangers and high cost, and have come to be taken for granted as intrinsic to modern life. A comparison of nuclear power and the system of automobility raises the question of how people come to embrace different kinds of technological and social systems, and what sort of event or tipping point may push people in new directions. No one ever asks why the Japanese government has promoted the system of mass automobility. Yet since the 1960s, more than 500,000 people in Japan have died in traffic accidents (National Police Agency 2011). This is far more than the number of those who have died as a result of natural disasters over the same period of time. The number of Japanese injured in traffic accidents over those decades reaches almost 40 million (ibid

Business · Economic geography · Geography · Political science · Regional science · Asian Industrial and Economic Development · Japanese History and Culture

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