S10E7 - Japan, Radical Thought, and the Politics of Disaster

Episode overview
Episode 7 continues Season 10’s regional focus with an in-depth conversation on Japan. Drawing on political theory, radical history, and long-term engagement with disaster-affected communities, the episode examines how Japanese intellectual traditions—often overlooked in disaster studies—help illuminate power, vulnerability, governance, and the social contracts that underpin disaster risk.

Hosts

• Jason von Meding

• Ksenia Chmutina

Guests

• Chris Gomez — Professor at Kobe University; head of the Sabo Laboratory; scholar of sediment-related hazards, ethical disaster management, and interdisciplinary disaster research

• Wes Cheek — Assistant Professor of Emergency Management, Massachusetts Maritime Academy; scholar of community, post-disaster reconstruction, and urban theory

Key themes

• Japan as a site of rich but underexplored disaster thinking

• Reading beyond disaster studies: political theory, history, anarchism, and Marxism

• Social contracts, sovereignty, and disaster as rupture

• Infrastructure, concrete, and the political economy of risk

• Radical alternatives in Japanese history

• Disaster, authoritarianism, and state violence

• Hope, resistance, and refusal in dark times

Core discussion highlights

• Chris Gomez reflects on returning to classic political theory, particularly Hobbes, to rethink disaster as a breaking point in the social contract between the state and communities.

• The discussion situates Japan’s long reliance on concrete-heavy disaster infrastructure within broader histories of governance, economic stability, and political legitimacy.

• Chris introduces Masao Akagi, often described as the “father of Sabo,” emphasizing how engineering practice, drawings, and material interventions function as forms of knowledge alongside academic texts.

• The episode challenges narrow definitions of scholarship, arguing that disaster knowledge is produced through multiple modalities, not only words and citations.

• Wes Cheek discusses Ōsugi Sakae as a key figure of Japan’s Taishō period, highlighting a moment when alternative political futures—anarchist, socialist, anti-authoritarian—were still possible.

• The conversation explores how the Great Kantō Earthquake was used as cover for state violence, repression, and the targeting of leftists and ethnic Koreans.

• Marxism is discussed as a crucial starting point for disaster scholarship, particularly for understanding vulnerability, power, and the non-natural origins of inequality.

• Both guests reflect on contemporary Japan, including demographic decline, economic contraction, tourism, immigration, and the rise of nationalist and exclusionary politics.

• Disasters are framed not only as physical events but as moments that expose deeper social fractures, discrimination, and political choices.