Whose disaster is it, anyway?

The name for the disaster seemed innocuous enough - the Great Kanto Pacific Earthquake of 2011. But the main quakes did not occur in Kanto, the region of Japan centered in Tokyo; they occurred off the coast of Tohoku, Japan’s Northeast. At this writing, there are 28,000 dead or missing in Tohoku versus 58 in Kanto. When the creators of QuakeBook were made aware of the discrepancy, they rewrote, “the Japanese Earthquake at 2:46 on March 11, 2011.” No mention of Tohoku.


The proposal seemed laudable enough - turn Tohoku into a great ecological utopia, an ecocity.  Tohoku would be made international, of Japan but at the same time not of Japan. Missing from the proposal was any mention of its current inhabitants. There was no mention of the dead or missing, no mention of the 300,000 then in shelters, no mention of the 3 million residents of Tohoku. The proposal read as if the region had been wiped clean of people and property.

When catastrophe strikes, humanity takes emotional ownership. We cry, we donate, we dig for information. Some volunteer, some profiteer. But after days or weeks, most give up emotional ownership and move on to other interests and crises.

When given up, however, emotional ownership must return to the people who are most hurt, who must bury loved ones, and who must rebuild their lives and region. For the March 11 earthquake, these are the people of Tohoku. Residents of Kanto and elsewhere will remember the quake, where they were, what they were doing and the ensuing weeks; the people of Tohoku will have their lives defined by it - before the quake, after the quake. The quake will become an indelible part of their identity. Emotional ownership must accompany that identity, and any recovery plans for Tohoku must respect both emotional and real ownership.

Humanity assigns emotional ownership, in part, by naming. Imagine if the Great Hanshin Earthquake had been named the Great Osaka Earthquake. The more numerous and seriously affected Kobe victims would have rightly felt robbed of identity and emotional ownership. (‘Hanshin’ is derived from a combination of ‘Osaka’ and ‘Kobe.’)

To give emotional ownership back to its rightful owners, ‘Tohoku’ must be part of any name for the March 11 disaster. The increasingly used “Great East Japan Earthquake” dilutes ownership; “Japanese Earthquake” dilutes it further. Calling this disaster “the Great Kanto Pacific Earthquake” is identity theft.