Suchergebnisse

The eruption of Mt. Unzen, from November 1990 to June 1991, brought on one of the worst volcanic disasters in Japan. Never before in post-war Japanese history has a natural disaster forced so many people to live as evacuees for so long, Two questionnaire surveys were carried out, the first in August, 1991 and the second in February, 1992. Conclusions drawn from these indicates that material assistance is important, but even more significant is the adoption of far-sighted policies to help evacuees adapt to their new disaster-caused situation. This would seem to be the biggest lesson to be learned from how today's affluent Japanese society dealt with the disaster.

Major earthquakes were predicted on both sides of the Pacific in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, and the state of California, the United States, at roughly the same time. These predictions differ from those made previously in that (1) the location, scale, and likelihood in a given timeframe have been specified; (2) the predictions for both regions have been taken seriously by the governments; and (3) there has been an unprecedented increase in earthquake concern among the area's residents. In the present study, the American and Japanese reactions to these earthquake predictions are compared in terms of earthquake policy and the impact on residents' lifestyles. Conclusins are that (1) there is a major difference in the time, money, and energy spent on earthquake policy, Shizuoka being far better prepared than California; (2) Tokai earthquake policy is premised on the assumption of short-term predictability, but California policy is not; and (3) Shizuoka residents are ahead of Californians in earthquake preparedness, but public earthquake awareness is growing steadily in California, and should be considerably enhanced in the near future.

In this article we very briefly review the history of sociobehavioral disaster research in Japan which is mostly a poet 1970 undertaking. Examples of recent major studies are given. While the work has been relatively limited so far, the future appears promising.

The purpose of this paper is to examine one aspect of community change following disaster: the impact of volcanic eruptions on two small communities with tourist-based economics. The data presented here are in the form of two case studies of towns affected by, respectively, the eruptions of Mt. Usu on the northern island of Hokkaido in Japan and of Mount St. Helens in Washington, located in the northwestern United States. Specifically, the paper describes the effects of the eruptions and subsequent emergency management policies upon the tourist economies of Toyako-Onsen, Japan, and Cougar, Washington. The study highlights differences and commonalities in response between the two communities, including reactions to the imposition of access controls, functional shifts in the local economies after controls had been lifted, and the impact of the public's perception of the hazard upon tourism.