What Should the Soundscape Community Do When Listening to the Soundscapes of Fukushima?

Abstract

A magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the most powerful recorded in Japanese history, struck off the coast of eastern Japan on March 11, 2011; the quake was felt through quite a large area of Japan, and strong tremors shook the Tohoku region especially hard. This quake also triggered an enormous tsunami (tidal wave), which caused severe damage to the Pacific coastal areas of eastern Japan.

The combined disasters related to the earthquake caused immense damage. According to one official document (National Police Agency of Japan 2013), the disasters were responsible for the deaths of 15,879 people, while 2,700 people are still missing. Moreover, 128,911 houses collapsed entirely, and 268,882 houses were partially destroyed.

The quake and tsunami caused secondary disasters in addition to their primary direct paths of destruction, with the serious accident that occurred at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant being one of the worst. It forced residents living within 30 km from the power plant as well as residents living in areas of extremely high contamination, where radiation levels exceeded 20 mSv/year, to evacuate. Although the restricted areas have been reduced gradually, and residents of relatively less contaminated areas have slowly been returning to their hometowns, there are still many evacuees forced to live far away from their hometowns. In addition, many people who lived outside of the restricted areas also evacuated voluntarily.

Fukushima city, where I live, is located 60 km from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. However, a large amount of radioactive contamination reached the city as a result of the direction of the wind on the day of the accident. Therefore, for most of the city, the current radiation dose levels are estimated as exceeding annual public dose limits (i.e., 1 mSv/year). In this situation, a large number of people, including my family (except me), evacuated the city voluntarily. According to a statement by the mayor in 2012, at least 6,000 people, or about 2 % of the residents, evacuated to areas outside of Fukushima. Thus, the daily lives of the city residents have changed significantly compared with before the quake, and in fact their lives continue to change even now. Along with these lifestyle changes among the residents, the soundscapes of Fukushima have also been changing.

Recording changing environments is the true study of soundscapes. Schafer (1977; 1993) proposed we consider the relationship between us and the sounds within our environment to better understand how that relationship is impacted when those sounds change around us. In his essay, The Soundscape, more than three decades later, his question remains relevant, inquiring again “what is the relationship between man and the sounds of his environment and what happens when those sounds change? (Schafer 2012, 95). These are the key issues of soundscape studies. Furthermore, we can say that researching the changing of soundscapes and then reconsidering and discussing desirable forms of soundscapes in response to those research results comprise

the process of soundscape design as interdisciplinary as we rely on such knowledge, as Schafer states (2012, 96), “to use these insights in planning future environments for man.” Therefore, I came to the conclusion that I, as a soundscape researcher living in Fukushima during this important period of its history, must record the changing post-accident soundscapes and report them to others around the world. Thus, I started the Fukushima Soundscape Project, in which the changing soundscapes of Fukushima are recorded, and then these records are released through a website (Nagahata 2011–2013). This project comprises one of the main parts of the Soundscape Project for Earthquake Disaster 3.11 (2011–2013), initiated by the Soundscape Association of Japan (SAJ).

This article outlines the Fukushima Soundscape Project and illustrates the symbolic soundscapes of Fukushima after the accident as recorded by the project.