Book Talk: Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan
On January 29th, the Centre for the Study of Global Japan hosted a talk by Professor Maxime Polleri from the Department of Anthropology at Université Laval on his recent book, Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan (2026). The event was moderated by Phillip Lipscy, Director of CSGJ and Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute.
Professor Polleri began by reflecting on his first visits to Fukushima after the disaster. During his fieldwork, he encountered contrasting experiences among residents with some rice farmers expressing happiness at being able to return to their land while many mothers he met were deeply worried about the health implications of radiation exposure for their families. Polleri discussed how these contrasting perspectives suggested that people in Fukushima often appeared to be describing recovery from two different historical events. The same ambiguity extended to the definition of radiation hazards themselves, which frequently existed in a gray zone between safety and danger.
Polleri then introduced the core focus of Radioactive Governance as the analysis of dominant governance practices that emerged after the Fukushima disaster and how these produced what he terms as “politics of revitalization.” This framework emphasizes the gradual repatriation of evacuees, the restoration of local economies, and the eventual restarting of nuclear plants. Polleri offered a critical examination of their direction, asking who and what becomes visible within official narratives of recovery, and which experiences are marginalized or excluded. He explained that each chapter of the book examines a different dimension of what he calls “radioactive governance,” defined as the set of practices through which authorities transform the unstable moment of crisis into a more stable narrative of post-disaster recovery.
The research presented in his book is based on multi-site ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Japan between 2015 and 2017. During this period, Polleri conducted interviews with a wide range of actors, including Fukushima residents, farmers, decontamination workers, and scientific experts. He also relied on participant observation, allowing him to closely observe how individuals navigated the everyday realities of life in a post-disaster environment.
Following this, Professor Polleri delved into the contributions of each chapter of his book. The book begins with explaining the historical context that enabled a politics of revitalization, to the management of expertise, the contested role of citizen movements and their politics of victimization, the reliance on technological fixes such as monitoring and decontamination, the mobilization of nostalgia around rural imaginaries, the political-economic importance of nuclear energy, the role of educational infrastructures in shaping public understandings of radiation, and finally the partial co-opting of citizen initiatives within broader recovery efforts.
To conclude, Polleri discussed the symbolic dimensions of recovery narratives. Government initiatives frequently invoked the concept of furusato, or the “native homeland,” encouraging evacuees to return and promoting tourism and local products as symbols of regional resilience. While these narratives emphasized communal loss and national solidarity, many evacuees found that the social fabric of their former communities had fundamentally changed, leading some to build new lives and identities elsewhere.
Following the presentation, the event concluded with a lively question-and-answer session. Audience members raised questions about the politics of expertise and the broader implications of Fukushima for debates about nuclear energy and disaster governance. We would like to thank Professor Polleri for his insights and the audience for their participation in the Q&A session.
