From Being Seen and Heard to Feeling Displaced — The Double-Edged Sword of Tōhoku’s Post-Disaster Tourism

Increasing number of disasters today impact rural or peripheral areas around the world, with the specific socio-economic and demographic settings in these contexts often affecting the nature of recovery. Tourism is often seen as a valid strategy for 'building back better' and providing new opportunities for localities moving forward. After the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan, the Tohoku region too has been subject to these trends, with many affected municipalities turning to tourism in order to revitalise local towns as part of the post-disaster recovery. By rejuvenating these regions, touristification of Tohoku, an area of Japan that has existed in relative invisibility till the disaster, has also been promoted as a broader tool of social justice that can help to stabilise local economies and bring tangible social and physical benefits that these towns have been lacking for a long time. However, this approach assesses the achievement of social justice only through the quantified metrics of resource allocation. We argue that it is not enough to only explore the measurable outcomes of tourism strategies within recovery contexts but also whether people in these communities recognise the outcomes as socially just. In this chapter we therefore explore the impact of tourism in post-disaster areas from the perspective of the local populations, and to what degree are these strategies recognised and experienced as socially just. We found that despite contacts with visitors offering opportunities for empowerment, integration of tourism into the physical rebuilding process is permanently altering the atmosphere in these towns, compromising local residents' place attachment and leading them to feel like visitors in their own homes.