Unread relics of a transnational ‘hometown’ in rural western Japan

Hatoko Comes Home: Civil Society and Nuclear Power in Japan

“…At the end of the nineteenth century, there was still a range of different employment openings for local men and women. In addition to domestic out-migration, for example, many townspeople emigrated overseas, such that transnational employment networks expanded dramatically in the first decades of the twentieth century (Dusinberre 2008). Equally significant were opportunities for enterprising businessmen in the municipality itself: in the fishing industry, in the ubiquitous "water trade"-the number of town brothels had increased substantially by the mid-1920s-and in the marine transportation industry, particularly in the transportation of domestic coal from Kyushu to the Kansai region.…”

“…In one remote district of the town, an island with unusual political and social characteristics, a powerful anti-nuclear campaign was organized, with the consequence that the construction of a power plant first proposed in 1982 was delayed until February 2011-and, in the wake of the Fukushima crisis, has been suspended indefinitely. To understand the emergence and complexities of that campaign requires a separate study in itself (Dusinberre 2012); in this article, we merely sketch the opening scenes of the pro-nuclear plotline-a story that tells us as much about human relations and motivations in postwar Kaminoseki as the three-decade drama depicted in Hatoko's Sea.…”

“…In order to understand the reasons why municipal politicians chose to embrace an industry widely recognized to be among the worst of modern society's "public bads" and commonly the object of anti-facility protests, a longterm historical approach is necessary (Dusinberre 2012). We sketch one part of that history in the first section of this article, juxtaposing the story of the nuclear industry's postwar rise to that of Kaminoseki's socio-economic decline in exactly the decades depicted in Hatoko's Sea.…”