Preventing social isolation: Otsuchi town after the Great East Japan Earthquake

ABSTRACT On 11th March 2011, Japan was struck by an earthquake of tremendous force, the Great East Japan Earthquake. A social issue that emerged during the early stage of reconstruction after the disaster was social isolation. This study aims to explore a process by which community action of the affected people can be promoted to prevent them from experiencing social isolation. The process was applied in the temporary housing estates built in Otsuchi town, Iwate Prefecture, after the great tsunami. In this case study, we analysed the processes of local government restructuring and community development as well as intervention effects developed by us in this process. Consequently, the barriers to the development of community actions for preventing isolation were identified: inefficiency in the local management system; a lack of cohesion in stakeholder perceptions; and disconnectedness between the system and interventions. These findings have implications for reconstruction planning, which include (1) a reconstruction strategy that defines the goal and shares a prevention policy, while addressing the treatment needs of the rapidly emerging of stakeholders and communication training for the staff supporting the affected people and (2) the community interventions that build consideration of community readiness and linkage to the local system.