Fukushima Fallout in Japanese Manga

Abstract

Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant calamity created a global focal point for debate about nuclear energy, and a notable forum for dissent. The incident, marked by the meltdown of three of the nuclear facility’s reactors, is the largest nuclear incident since the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster of 1986. In 2014, the popular Japanese manga Oishinbo, authored by Tetsu Kariya, helped set off a firestorm of intense debate in social and traditional media when it published a fictionalized account of the environmental and health hazards for residents living close to the plant. This paper explores the ethical implications of such portrayals in a fictionalized medium through the theoretical lens of Jürgen Habermas and against the unique backdrop of Japan’s evolving media landscape and tumultuous recent environmental history. Habermas’ discourse ethics theory is well situated to analyze this complex case, in spite of the eventual and well-publicized suspension of the Oishinbo comic. Habermas’ favoring of a public moral discourse that is free of power imbalances, and one in which the superior argument for society as a whole ultimately prevails, helps contextualize the important but contentious discourse that took place across Japan in the wake of Kariya’s publication about Fukushima, and the responsibility of the manga in balancing the well-being of Fukushima Prefecture residents with a broader public interest. By connecting his actions to a transcendental purpose of giving voice to a marginalized constituency, Kariya established discourse within manga as a pathway to potential resolution for victims of an ecological crisis.