Japan’s changing DRR policy discourse and what it means for inclusion

What brought me to DRR

A disaster changed the course of my life. I was living and working in Japan when the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake hit. The disaster did not affect me badly, but I became so interested in how other foreign nationals in Japan experienced the same events that I quit my job and pursued a PhD on the topic. I have since built an academic career researching multilingual crisis communication and inclusive DRR.

The language of DRR policy

My colleagues and I spend a lot of time thinking about policy. We all know that policy can be important in disaster risk reduction (DRR), especially when it is linked to the allocation and prioritisation of resources. The language used in policies is also significant. It can tell us a lot about the problems and solutions policymakers think are important, the actors and roles they consider, the meanings and memories they share, and the ideologies and power relations they express.

Japan’s DRR policymaking

In a recent piece of work, I looked at the language used in the last two decades of annual White Papers on Disaster Management in Japan (bōsai hakusho). The Japanese Government uses white papers in its DRR policymaking to apply lessons learned from recent disasters and revise related acts, policies and plans. I looked at the words associated with foreign nationals (gaikokujin) in these important policy documents, and used statistical analysis to identify broad patterns in these associations.

I was surprised by what I found. The patterns point to increasing inclusion in DRR in Japan, at least from a policy perspective, which is good news.

How DRR policy in Japan has become more inclusive

In the early 2000s, the white papers largely discussed foreign nationals only insofar as they were involved in Japan’s regional DRR cooperation programmes. Foreignness was considered relevant but also external to DRR. From the 2010s, and especially following the 2011 disaster, the white papers began to consider the impact of future disastrous events on foreign nationals in Japan in increasing detail. The policies now assumed that foreign nationals would be affected by these events, and foreignness was associated heavily with the legal and administrative measures required in response and recovery.

A significant shift began in the late 2010s. Foreign nationals started to be associated with ideas of community. The white papers began to frame foreign residents as community members with diverse needs, and to describe concrete measures to match those needs to resources. At the same time, and in the context of global sporting events due to take place in Japan, the white papers also began to focus on language support for short-term foreign visitors, and developing technologies for speedy first response. 

Key takeaways

Overall, the last two decades of white papers reveal a steady increase in the language of inclusion, and a more detailed consideration of how to engage foreign nationals in DRR. There is a lot of good to take away from this more inclusive DRR policy in Japan:

• It considers some diversity among foreign nationals, especially based on the period of residence. Foreign nationals are not a uniform subset of the population; diversity and inclusion go hand in hand.
• It describes some concrete measures and funding. Training coordinators at the local level to develop and distribute disaster-related information and match it to foreign nationals’ needs is a particularly welcome development, and funding promises implementation.
• It recognises the relevance of language and culture to disaster-related communication for foreign nationals. Translated information is not the only thing that foreign nationals need to reduce their disaster risks, but it can be a very important first step.

These are all points of relevance to jurisdictions beyond Japan as well.

A final note of caution

It is important to remember that the progressive policy discourse described above tells us nothing about implementation. Research suggests that the positive measures outlined in the white papers are not always carried out, and are enacted to varying degrees on the ground.

Nevertheless, we should value examples of discourses of inclusion in themselves. These can counterbalance the divisive, anti-immigrant discourses that are being used to shape and influence political realities in many parts of the world, including Japan. I am hopeful that DRR policymakers in Japan will continue on a path to greater inclusion, and work with foreign nationals there to learn lessons and imagine a better future.

Patrick Cadwell is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University. He is also a member of the Centre for Translation and Textual Studies . He researches crisis communication, disaster risk reduction and technology (non-)adoption.