Value conflict among voluntary evacuee mothers from Fukushima

Protecting Children From Radiation, Respecting Family and Society

Bibliographic Data

ID6194752
AuthorsAleksandr Sklyar (corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume33
Issue2
Pages213-239
Publication date2021-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJapan Forum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0955-5803 • E-ISSN: 1469-932X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09555803.2018.1552310
OpenAlexW3006233436
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited19

In this ethnographic article, I present the experiences and perspectives of voluntary evacuee mothers from central Fukushima prefecture who fled with their young children to south-eastern Yamagata prefecture following the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant catastrophe. I got to know these families during twenty months of fieldwork from 2014 to 2016. I argue that the value of protecting their children from radiation exposure was in tension with the valuing of school-based and family-based socialization. Valuing group-based socialization at nursery and elementary schools meant that mothers faced limitations as to what food and drink they could control when their children were at school, even in evacuation. Valuing kinship ties with husbands/fathers and extended family who remained in Fukushima meant welcoming husbands who continued to live their everyday lives in supposedly dirty Fukushima into their supposedly clean Yamagata evacuation homes. Many evacuees also regularly returned to parts of Fukushima out of family obligations. I call such return visits ‘micro returns’ in order to highlight the abnormality of having to consider the possible effects of radiation exposure in what would otherwise be run-of-the-mill, ‘normal’ culturally-sanctioned visits on holidays and weekends. Such were the material and social tensions – the pulls into and away from Fukushima, into and out of certain social and material relations – that were at the forefront of the experience of voluntary evacuation to a city just one hour’s drive away

Economics · Kinship · Management · Political science · Social science · Socialization · Sociology · Turnover · Law · Risk Perception and Management

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