Geographies of mobility justice: post-disaster tourism, recognition justice, and affect in Tohoku, Japan

Abstract

This article investigates instances in which mobility justice is highlighted in post-disaster tourism in eastern Tohoku, Japan, a coastal area almost completely destroyed by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. After this unprecedented disaster, some of these towns have directed their recovery efforts toward the development of post-disaster tourism as a means to counteract outmigration and loss of jobs. By using the broader frame of mobility justice in tourism and geographies of affect, this article seeks to showcase how affective relations between people and post-disaster places, and between international tourists and locals, can foster a better understanding of the big and small injustices enacted at different scales in the area. In particular, this article focuses on the potential of ‘recognition justice’ to rebalance the scale between top-down policies and local needs. Post-disaster tourism performances utilize the mobility of information through global media, spreading survivors’ narratives, stories, and images. A politics of affect built around landmarks in the post-disaster landscape the tsunami has contributed to the creation of immobile nodes, which become locus of contestations and opportunities to leverage mobility justice and broader recognition justice for the local populations.