A Luhmannian Analysis of Disaster Preparedness for Foreign Residents in Kumamoto City, Japan

People moving to Japan face the same natural disaster risks as all other residents. The vast majority of these new residents however lack the disaster training know-how that is taken for granted by those raised in Japan, who take part in disaster drills from childhood. This is to say little of the challenges faced with language, lack of community, etc.

Despite these challenges, many foreign residents also do not take the necessary precautions towards disaster preparedness, often remaining in the mindset they had in their home countries with an attitude of “it won’t happen to me”. This can lead to a double problem: that of Japanese municipalities designing disaster plans which do not take into account the lived realities of a growing heterogeneous foreign-born population and these newcomers maintaining outdated views on risk based on the ones they faced in their homeland.

This presentation will examine this issue from a Luhmannian perspective, focusing on the first-order ontological views on risk that incoming residents can carry to Japan with them and the second-order observations of Japanese municipalities, observations which aim to keep all residents safe but can struggle to understand the growing foreign-born population it attempts to observe. It will also discuss the problem of double-contingency and how it can be difficult to build disaster resilient communities when residents do not share cultural norms through which they place expectations on each other.

The presentation will focus on a case study of Kumamoto city, where a major earthquake occurred in 2016. This will allow a discussion of the issues faced by the foreign community at the time of the disaster, shifts in disaster management based on lessons learned, and intractable issues which still remain, along with a discussion on whether, systemically-speaking, they can be overcome.