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Rhetorical Marginalization of Science and Democracy: Politics in Risk Discourse on Radioactive Risks in Japan

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Lessons From Fukushima

Abstract

This chapter analyses “politics in the risk discourse of radioactive risks” that we have witnessed since March 11, 2011 in various discursive arenas such as the mass media, governmental/municipal decision making and risk communication activities, and arguments by individual scientists on Social Network Services (SNSs). The discourse has rhetorically marginalized what has been at stake in terms of public anxiety and controversies over the risks of low dose radioactive contamination of foods, water, soil, and tsunami debris. Such marginalization can be classified into three forms in terms of how the risk discourse downplays the significance of scientific and/or social dimensions: (1) Reduction in dimensions of issues to scientific ones and the problem of public misunderstanding of science (scienceplanation ); (2) Mobilization of shaky or imbalanced scientific arguments; and (3) Emotional mobilization. We present eight case studies to exemplify these three forms of rhetorical marginalization of science and democracy in the risk discourse. In any forms of marginalization, legitimate democratic deliberation as well as genuine scientific arguments have been suppressed and replaced by top-down technocratic decisions that have sometimes relied on shaky scientific bases. In conclusion, we discuss the nature of these problems from the perspective of risk governance of technological disasters and reflexive questions as to the grounds of our criticism of marginalization.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Scienceplanation is a term coined by Shirabe, based on the concept of “mansplanation” which means the way a man comments on or explains something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner. Similarly, scienceplanation is defined as the way a scientist or an authority figure comments on or explains something to lay persons in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner. See the definition of mansplanation (retrieved August 20, 2014 from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mansplanation).

  2. 2.

    In Japanese Internet slang, radiophobia is called “radio-brain” because the pronunciation of “radio-brain” in Japanese (housha-no) coincides with “radioactivity (housha-no)”. The word appeared in March 2011, immediately after the accident.

  3. 3.

    See the record on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20140829035539/http://ceron.jp/url/www.kantei.go.jp/saigai/senmonka_g6.html.

  4. 4.

    Tentative translation of the Act by the Japanese Government is available at: http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail/?id=2279&vm=04&re=01&new=1. (As of October 2, 2014).

  5. 5.

    The “standard with regard to the Areas under MSMs” is referred to as “a certain level” in the stipulation of the Article 8 (1) in the Victims Support Act.

  6. 6.

    One of the most cited documents is the report by the Ministry of Ukraine of Emergencies, Twenty-five Years after Chernobyl Accident: Safety for the Future, which is based on investigations on local residents living in area contaminated with low-dose radiation for many years (Ministry of Ukraine of Emergencies 2011). Its core parts, Chap. 3 and this chapter, have been translated into Japanese by the Chernobyl Health Survey and Health Care for Victims—Japan Women's Network, Citizen's Science Initiative Japan, and 10 volunteer individuals including the authors of this chapter. In addition, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (Nippon Hoso Kyokai: NHK) produced a television program based on this report and conducted its own investigations in September 2012.

  7. 7.

    There are other rationales for understanding the issues as a matter of policy while the promoters of the Act have not been mentioned. The acceptability of risk generally entails various extra-scientific considerations including value judgments as was argued in case 1 in Sect. 4.3. Decisions on whether to accept risks or not when radioactive contamination is caused by nuclear accidents or whether to evacuate or not, involves numerous questions concerning family income, jobs, children’s schools, relationships with parents, relatives and neighbors, the meaning of life as well as health problems in the family, which are not limited to radiation risk.

  8. 8.

    In the first place, the setting of 20 mSv/year as the standard for lifting governmental evacuation orders is the result of a closed political judgment, even though it has usually been explained as scientific. According to an article in the Asahi Newspaper on May 25, 2013, the Ministers in charge of addressing the accident initially argued whether to set the standard at 5 mSv/year, but they finally abandoned this idea because it would increase the number of evacuees and amount of compensation (Sekine 2013, May 25).

  9. 9.

    Ohshima and Yokemoto (2014) estimates the total costs for compensation, decontamination, restoration from accident, decommission of reactors, and other governmental countermeasures at 110.819 billion USD (1 USD = 100 JPY).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Hideyuki Hirakawa

  2. Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan

    Masashi Shirabe

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  1. Hideyuki Hirakawa
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  2. Masashi Shirabe
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Correspondence to Hideyuki Hirakawa .

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  1. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Yuko Fujigaki

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Hirakawa, H., Shirabe, M. (2015). Rhetorical Marginalization of Science and Democracy: Politics in Risk Discourse on Radioactive Risks in Japan. In: Fujigaki, Y. (eds) Lessons From Fukushima. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15353-7_4

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