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SUMMARY:Disaster\, Law and Social Justice in Japan: The Tsunami of Debt an
 d Homelessness - Julius Weitzdörfer
DTSTART:20181015T160000Z
DTEND:20181015T180000Z
UID:TALK112927@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Julius Weitzdörfer
DESCRIPTION:It is often said that it takes crises to reveal the true chara
 cter of a society. This paper analyses Japan’s disaster response in the 
 wake of the world’s costliest natural disaster\, and critically discusse
 s the resulting questions of distributive justice: The Great East Japan Ea
 rthquake of 2011 unleashed unprecedented tremors and a devastating tsunami
 \, damaging one million buildings and rendering 300\,000 victims displaced
  and dispossessed. Former home-owners and businesspeople found themselves 
 in the position of seeking loans to rebuild and invest\, while being unabl
 e to pay off pre-disaster mortgages and debts. Largely unnoticed outside o
 f Japan\, this so-called “double-loan crisis” (nijû saimu mondai) pro
 moted private and corporate insolvency\, threatening financial institution
 s\, jeopardising disaster recovery and entrenching social inequality. Base
 d on a legal analysis\, this talk critically discusses normative concepts 
 underlying disaster relief\, disaster capitalism\, and social justice in J
 apan. This highlights conflicts between competing classes of victims and b
 etween competing policy aims. Finally\, based on the socioeconomic situati
 on\, the legal analysis\, and the justice considerations\, it attempts to 
 provide policy recommendations to improve the way in which burdens of unin
 sured risk and recovery are shared between victims and society – in Japa
 n and beyond.\n \nJulius Weitzdörfer is Director of Studies in Law at Dar
 win College and an Affiliated Lecturer teaching EU Environmental and Susta
 inable Development Law at the Faculty of Law. He is a full-time Research A
 ssociate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). His exper
 tise lies in the governance of extreme risks\, in including through disast
 er-\, environmental-\, and nuclear-law. Adopting comparative\, economic\, 
 socio-legal and policy-focussed approaches\, he explores these topics in d
 ynamic fields of law in Japan\, particularly the legal case of Fukushima. 
 Before reading law in Hamburg (Bucerius Law School\, Max-Planck-Institute)
 \, Shanghai (Fudan University)\, Kyoto (Kyoto University) and Cambridge\, 
 Julius studied journalism and Japanese in Leipzig and Tokyo (Waseda Univer
 sity)\, and previously worked as an editor and a television co-host at NHK
  Japan.
LOCATION:Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies\, Room 8/9
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