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Dear Kiyomi-san
I am very grateful for your clarifications, especially since I found the
exchange that had seemed to have happened between you and the next poster
rather surreal.
I already see instances of prying journalists asking survivors to talk about
what they feel having lost their families and their entire community. As the
rest of Japan regains normalcy while the northeast still remains deeply
wounded for a very long time, there will be even more cases where the
survivors will have to deal with questions about their experiences,
innocently asked, but potentially deeply hurtful simply because of the gaps
in experiences. I guess a gap of similar nature enabled the (mis)reading
here, of a call to "take deep interest" in the disaster into a cheerful
invitation to whip up new fieldwork projects on recovery (which there will
be more than plenty), besides, of course, the fact that many of us on the
list are communicating in our second language.
I don't deny that we are all in research "industry" and in our profession
everything is potentially an opportunity for grant-getting and quick
publication. But at least for the moment, if we want to use the
"opportunity" word at all to talk about this event, I hope that we can at
the very least look at this disaster as one to think about extreme
"suffering at a distance" (a la Butler or Sontag).
Hideko Mitsui
British Academy-Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral
Fellow
University of Tokyo
On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 12:16 PM, Kiyomi Doi <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> * A postgraduate project comprising online journal, *
> * online discussions, teaching and research resources *
> * and international contacts directory. *
> ******************************************************
>
> Dear all,
>
> Thanks for the good wishes and great support, and sorry for the impersonal
> mail
> for this time as I have not anticipated to have got so many reactions.
> Some were offers of collaborating projects, others posed important ethical
> concerns. Even offering me a shelter was hugely grateful. All messages are
> educational for me. Thank you so much.
>
> REGARDING RESEARCH ON THE DISASTER
> I am afraid that I might have been lack of talk because I am linguistically
> challenged. I did not mean to invite you to study focusing on a calamitous
> event
> at the moment. Interviewing with those who lost one’s home to Tsunami and
> the
> nuclear accident? Certainly not. They have already to dominate news
> headlines.
> I have to apologize those who got interested in setting up the project
> right now
> and are ready for the field trip to this country. But now is not very good
> timing to take action for fieldwork. According to my friend who works for
> anthropology of natural disaster (especially major earthquake), what he
> would
> like researchers to do is to maintain an awareness of it, and in half a
> year,
> they will be able to start the investigation. So, please take my previous
> posting as to bring up an idea of new anthropological contribution.
>
> I did provide contact information of those who got interested to the
> Japanese
> researchers in the related field, but please kindly give them a few weeks
> to
> reply to. Until then, please continue to hold your interest. I am sorry if
> I
> mislead you.
>
>
> MY PERSONAL THOUGHTS ON 17TH, MARCH
> It will take more time to sort out my idea. Currently it is hard to use PC
> due
> to rolling blackouts.
>
> What I can say briefly now is that the “disaster fields” should be located
> carefully. The word “disaster” easily reminds you of the images of dead
> bodies,
> protective clothing in atomic crisis, crying children who lost their
> parents or
> rescue activities. Our imaginations tend to derive from what you have
> already
> seen through news release and movies. They reflect absolutely one side of
> the
> reality.
>
> But what I am directly experiencing is, as Rebecca Solnit, the American
> nonfiction writer, we have something like “order” now. But it’s not exact
> the
> one. Rather, as Nigel Rapport termed “irony”, which is human capacity of
> virtue
> to interpret one’s life and surroundings in imaginative ways with hope. To
> some
> extent, we are ignoring dominant discourses by means of keeping our daily
> routines. I am cautious about simplistic cultural relativism like “the
> Japanese
> are well-ordered”.
>
> Once you shift your frame from the absolutely devastated area to other
> afflicted
> places, the multiple realities are neither catastrophic nor mutual
> cooperative
> as you imagine.
> Following Tim Ingold’s “fieldwork from the ground”,
> Here, I will list some firsthand information surrounding me:
>
> We have access to the (official and informal) data of amount of radiation
> every
> hour measured by Geiger counters. The amount in my place is several times
> more
> than usual, but still much lower than Kerara and Ramsar where are so called
> “High Background Radiation Area”.So, (sooner or later it will turn out if
> we are
> over-optimistic or indomitable) my neighbors are not panicking. They say,
> everything will be ok in a month.
>
> During blackout, we still have constant stream of traffic without traffic
> light
> or police.
> It is not orderly at all but I have not heard any ambulance sirens. On the
> other
> hand, all gas stations have been closed for no fuel. I wonder how people
> can
> keep driving cars.
>
> The lottery stand near my house sells lottery tickets and the staff told me
> that
> the earthquake has no impact on sales.
>
> My music teacher told me that two men and a girl got in to start learning
> ukulele and guitar in this week.
>
> Yesterday, I saw an airport limousine leaving this town to Narita
> international
> airport are filled with non-Japanese.
>
>
> A friend of mine decided to evacuate to Kyushu district taking her children
> and
> leaving her husband.
>
> More than 50 % of people in this town are wearing masks. This is a sort of
> seasonal feature. 30% of the Japanese population have allergy to cedar
> pollen
> and wearing a mask is quite common in this season.
>
>
> Of course some may mask for preventing from radioactive substances. The
> rest of
> them do not guard their faces.
>
>
> I wish I could write more, but unfortunately, from now, the town I am
> living is
> going to blackout for hours.
>
>
> So, this is so far I can inform you.
>
> Take care, and thank you for all your encouragements!
>
> All the best,
>
> Kiyomi Doi
>
> PhD candidate,
>
> University of Tokyo,
> Japan
>
>
>
>
>
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