Disaster Volunteer Experiences in Northeastern Japan: Who is Helping Whom?

• In Event: Crafting Help and Hope in East Asia

Abstract

“I started this project to give back to the local community what I had received as a disaster volunteer…” Empirical data obtained from ongoing fieldwork since April 2011 in disaster-stricken Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures suggests that the relations between volunteers and local citizens are more complex than a one-way process of non-local volunteers helping local disaster victims. This ethnographic study examines the experiences of disaster volunteers in northeastern Japan (Tohoku) aged between 20 and 40. Selected narratives by individuals who came to the region as disaster volunteers and engage in a variety of projects and live in Tohoku or commute between Tokyo and Tohoku illustrate the great potential of volunteers breaking up the conventional local norms, but also the challenges they face in positioning themselves in the local community. This paper traces the motivations of volunteers to extend help to locals in a society where volunteering is yet to be acknowledged by the mainstream. It contends that altruism features in volunteers, but also the search for a meaningful life (Mathews 1996, Nakano 2000), the quest for new forms and modes of working and living (Hiroi 2011), playing for time and extending networks as a preparation for establishing social entrepreneur start-ups (Klien 2015). Ultimately, the decision to volunteer needs to be contextualized in a neoliberal society where individuals aspire to a greater quality of life, but find themselves faced with the need to take risks arising from the structural uncertainties of post-growth Japan.

Author

• Susanne Klien, Hokkaido University