Yukio HIMIYAMA, Hokkaido University of Education, Japan
Large scale disasters are becoming increasingly prominent worldwide, and they affect, and are affected by, land use. The gigantic tsunami triggered by the M. 9.0 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku (North-East) District, Japan, on 11th March 2011 devastated the coastal area of over a thousand kilometres long, inflicting enormous damage on the people, society, industries and land use. In the next year of the earthquake and the tsunami, the present writer wrote a paper entitled The Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 and Land Use (Himiyama, 2013.4) based on his own field surveys and other evidences available then. The paper consisted of the following chapters: 1. Introduction; 2. Overview of land use change in the tsunami inundated area; 3. Regional characteristics of the damage to land use; 4. Change of settlements; 5. The roles of schools as public facility at the time of disaster; 6: Trunk roads and railways; 7. Change of agricultural land use; 8. Effects of salt break forests; 9. Conclusions. The disaster still continues now, i.e. for eleven years since its start, with newly emerging as well as more persistent problems, even though there have been obvious accomplishments in construction of motorways, seawalls or embankments, raising of lowlands, etc. The present paper re-examines the issues discussed in the previous paper based on the facts and evidences accumulated since then. One important issue to be added is the consequence of the nuclear disaster resulting from the accident of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant caused by the earthquake and the tsunami, and the serious radioactive contamination that followed. It was untouched in the previous paper because it was not possible to enter the substantial area surrounding the nuclear power plant then because of heavy contamination.
Mots clés : land use|Great East Japan Earthquake|Great East Japan Tsunami|Great East Japan Disaster
A105116YH