Women in Faith-Based Disaster Response to the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake

Although Japan is recognized for its specialized and efficient disaster management systems, the response to the April 2016 earthquakes in the Kumamoto area (southern Japan) was insufficient. A disaster culture focused primarily on non-seismic hazards affected the region’s disaster preparedness. Moreover, despite the Japanese government’s efforts to incorporate a gender perspective into disaster management policies over the past thirty years, these efforts failed to alter the gender-biased nature of the responses. As a result, the women of Kumamoto faced not only context-specific vulnerabilities due to inadequate preparedness for seismic hazards but also additional social vulnerabilities linked to their gender. In this context, religious organizations largely leveraged their localized culture to promote resilience by prioritizing the knowledge and skills of both members and non-members, regardless of gender. Drawing upon 22 semi-structured interviews with women affiliated with Sōka Gakkai and the God Light Association (GLA), this paper investigates the intersection of gender and religiosity to evaluate the preparedness of women associated with religious organizations. The findings indicate that the persistent gender-blind nature of institutional post-seismic interventions exacerbates women’s vulnerabilities and hampers their human rights. However, religious organizations, including conservative ones, may provide more inclusive disaster management and response models. The results of this study underscore the necessity for more inclusive disaster management frameworks to effectively mobilize and sustain community resilience, and provide a human-rights-based approach to disaster prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery.