Video lecture: the Japanese society after March 11, 2011
In her video lecture, Dr. Aya Ezawa talks about the sociology of Japan: studying Japanese society after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
The earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 has deeply affected Japanese society at all levels. Although most of the rubble has been cleared by now, more than a year after the event, there are entire communities to be rebuilt, and there is a lingering fear of radiation from Fukushima. What do these events mean for Japanese society? And what does it means to study Japanese society after these events?
In this 10 minute clip, Dr. Aya Ezawa, who teaches sociology courses in the Japanese studies program, explains what it means to examine a disaster from a sociological perspective, and how such an approach allows us to look at media coverage, and the impact of the disaster from a new perspective.
Learning about Japan, and about the disaster is not simply about ‘knowing the facts’. Rather, it allows us to critically think about how ‘news and facts’ about disasters are made by news media, and what the disaster actually means to people in the disaster region. (This lecture is given in English.)