Predicting Disasters : Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan

Kerry Smith

ISBN 10: 1512825379 / ISBN 13: 9781512825374

Editore: University Of Pennsylvania Press Feb 2024, 2024

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Neuware - 'Japan is a place where powerful earthquakes have occurred more frequently and have caused more harm in the modern era than they have in all but a handful of other locations on the planet. In the twentieth century alone, earthquake disasters took almost as many lives as they had in all of the country's recorded history up to that point. Predicting Disasters is a history of scientists' and policy makers' efforts to reduce the uncertainty around the timing and location of powerful earthquakes in modern Japan through forecasting and prediction. Kerry Smith shows how, in the twentieth century, scientists struggled to make large-scale earthquake disasters legible to the public and to policy makers as significant threats to Japan's future and as phenomena that could be anticipated and prepared for. Smith also explains why understanding those struggles matter. Disasters belong alongside more familiar topics of analysis in modern Japanese history, such as economic growth and its impacts, political crises and popular protest, and even the legacies of the war, for the work they do in helping us better understand how the past has influenced beliefs about Japan's possible futures, and how beliefs about the future shaped the present'.

Codice articolo 9781512825374

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Predicting Disasters : Earthquakes, Scientists, and Uncertainty in Modern Japan
• Editore: University Of Pennsylvania Press Feb 2024
• Data di pubblicazione: 2024
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1512825379
• ISBN 13: 9781512825374
• Rilegatura: Buch
• Condizione: Neu
• Dimensioni: 229 L x 152 A x 25 P (millimetri) 229 millimetri di larghezza per 152 millimetri di altezza per 25 millimetri di profondità
• Peso: 708 grammi

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Japan is a place where powerful earthquakes have occurred more frequently and have caused more harm in the modern era than they have in all but a handful of other locations on the planet. In the twentieth century alone, earthquake disasters in Japan took almost as many lives as they had in all of the country’s recorded history up to that point. Predicting Disasters is the first English-language book to explore how scientists convinced policy makers and the public in postwar Japan that catastrophic earthquakes were coming, and the first to show why earthquake prediction has played such a central role in Japan’s efforts to prepare for a dangerous future ever since.

Kerry Smith shows how, in the twentieth century, scientists struggled to make large-scale earthquake disasters legible to the public and to policy makers as significant threats to Japan’s future and as phenomena that could be anticipated and prepared for. Smith also explains why understanding those struggles matters. Disasters, Smith contends, belong alongside more familiar topics of analysis in modern Japanese history—such as economic growth and its impacts, political crises and popular protest, and even the legacies of the war—for the work they do in helping us better understand how the past has influenced beliefs about Japan’s possible futures, and how beliefs about the future shape the present.

Predicting Disasters makes relevant elements of Japan’s past more accessible to readers interested in the histories of disaster and scientific communities, as well as to those who want to gain a better understanding of the risk and uncertainty surrounding natural phenomena.

Informazioni sull?autore

Kerry Smith is Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Brown University.