Where are the Women’s Voices? A Case Study of Otsuchi Town After the Great East Japan Earthquake

The Great East Japan Earthquake was a devastating disaster that claimed many lives and caused severe damage. It also brought latent problems in Japan, such as declining birthrate, an aging population, and gender inequality, to the surface. In Otsuchi, Iwate, a conservative, rural region, women’s voices continue to be the exception in multiple spheres of community governance. There is a lack of representation of women’s voices in historical records, documentation, and stories, and there are few records of women’s history in Otsuchi. This chapter presents an alternative perspective, centering the voices of women to hear their experiences directly. Looking back at the ten years since the tsunami, five narratives from women in Otsuchi shed light on their experiences, how their views were represented within post-disaster processes, and how this has impacted community recovery. The women’s stories were gathered through rapport-based relationships fostered through almost four years of field research, and drawn from community archives preserved by a monk at the local temple who gathered the memories of disaster victims in Otsuchi in a collection entitled “Living Testimonies”. With a focus on the hidden gender issues, this chapter attends to the stories told by local women in Otsuchi to understand how the disaster impacted the very survival of women, and implications of the exclusion of their voices in decision-making and the recovery planning process for the community and townscape of Otsuchi ten years after the tsunami.