More than five years after it happened, the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, is still very much on our minds. J. F. Oberlin University lost one of its students, Arina Satoh of Rikuzen-Takata City in Iwate Prefecture, and there are other members of the extended J. F. Oberlin family who continue to live a day-by-day existence in the “temporary” shelters put up for them.

In the wake of that day’s tragic events, there has been a lot of discussion about nuclear energy, about how to recover from the disaster, and about how to protect people from future disasters, among other issues—but have the lessons learned from these discussions been disseminated widely enough in the international community? With that concern in mind, J. F. Oberlin University’s Institute for International Studies held a symposium on October 18 and 19, 2012, “The 2011 Japanese Tsunami: Disaster, Response, and Recovery,” in Keikandoh chapel at Machida Campus. The aim of the symposium was to deepen understanding of the March 11 events, not just in Japan but all over the world, not just for scholars but for everybody. This symposium can still be watched on iTunes U.

Now the University Press of Kentucky has published a set of essays entitled Japan after 3/11: Global Perspectives on the Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Meltdown. The bar for getting published by a major American university is set very high: it’s said that only about one percent of manuscripts submitted are accepted for publication, so it’s quite an accomplishment for the entire symposium’s papers to have joined “The One Percent Club.” The book consists of more than 500 pages and is divided into 23 chapters, of which professors from J. F. Oberlin University wrote 8 chapters. They include Professor Junko Oikawa, Professor Unryu Suganuma, Professor Yukiko Dejima, Professor Lisa Yinghong Li, and Professor Christine Mary Wilby. In addition, the characters on the book’s cover were written by Toyoshi Satow, Chancellor of J. F. Oberlin University. The book is well worth reading and is surely destined to be used as teaching material in a wide variety of courses for years to come.

Japan after 3/11: Global Perspectives on the Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Meltdown

I. Earthquake and Tsunami Damage
II. Nuclear Radiation Crisis
III. Impact of the Earthquake and Tsunami on Business and Industry
IV. Socioeconomic Dimensions of Response, Recovery and Reconstruction,
V. Comparative Responses to the Disaster

• To watch the symposium: iTunes U
• To buy the book directly from the publisher:
  Address: Hopkins Fulfillment Service, P. O. Box 50370, Baltimore, MD 21211-4370
  Phone: 1-800-537-5487
  Fax: 1-410-516-6998
  E-mail: HFScustserv@press.jhu.edu
• To buy the book on the Internet: Amazon