Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists: The Gender Politics of Food Contamination after Fukushima
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Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists: The Gender Politics of Food Contamination after Fukushima
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780822373964 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/04/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 816 KB |
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Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists
The Gender Politics of Food Contamination
By Aya Hirata Kimura
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2016 Duke University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-7396-4
CHAPTER 1
"Moms with Radiation Brain"
Gendered Food Policing in the Name of Science
Kobayashi Akiko is a married working mother in her midthirties whose son was six years old when the Fukushima accident happened. She lived in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, which was 150 miles away from the troubled reactors and said to be safe according to the government. But the accident nonetheless made her very wary of radiation contamination, and she fled southward with her son immediately after she saw the news of the blast from the nuclear reactors. Because of work and school, among other reasons, it was not feasible for her to relocate permanently, so they came back home after a week. But nervous about her son's health, she decided to buy only food from the southern parts of Japan, avoiding anything from the northeast and eastern regions. She thought about joining a consumer cooperative famous for its strict food safety standards, but decided not to because she heard that they did not let their customers choose where their vegetables came from. Whenever she went grocery shopping, she looked at the details of each product's label to make sure it was not from the Tohoku region. If a product's provenance was not clearly indicated on the label, she wouldn't buy it. While she had been an avid supporter of chisan-chisho, or local food movements, she started buying soy milk and other food products from Costco because they were from the United States, and she felt they were safer. She tried to avoid seafood from the affected areas too, but this was still a bit worrisome to her since she learned that the place of origin labeling for seafood products was quite ambiguous. She was not sure about her brown rice, either. Brown rice was said to be richer in nutrients but also more likely to have a higher contamination level than polished rice. "It has all become confusing," she said. "It is really stressful every day."
Kobayashi-san was one of the many mothers who have tried their best to avoid contaminated food in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident. The government and nuclear experts failed to provide information about food contamination in a timely and comprehensive manner. In the void that was created by the inability and unwillingness of experts to provide clear guidelines, laypeople began to cobble together bits of information and devise their own strategies in a desperate search for ways to mitigate radiation threats.
It is not a coincidence that it is mothers' stories that we have to narrate to understand the day-to-day struggles with food contamination threats. Domestic responsibilities are highly feminized, including daily preparation of food for one's family. After the nuclear accident, mothers devised various strategies to address potential harm from radioactive fallout from the troubled nuclear reactors — they avoided food from the affected areas, changed where they shopped for their food, and tried to cook in a way that would reduce the contamination. They also tried to get hold of detectors to measure the actual contamination levels of their food.
Rather than being commended as dutifully exercising their maternal responsibilities, these mothers were harshly condemned as irrational, emotional, and shameful. Despite the centrality of food in typical understandings of proper motherhood, the mothers who tried to cook uncontaminated food were not praised for their actions. Instead, the notion of fuhyohigai (harmful rumors) was invoked to construe these concerned mothers as dangerous fearmongers. A compound of fuhyo (rumors) and higai (damages), the term refers to damage from the decline in sales of products that were regarded as contaminated with radiation. The connotation is that consumer avoidance of food is baseless: "subjectively considering food or products as unsafe without any scientific basis" (Sekiya 2011, 86), according to one expert on fuhyohigai. Sometimes a more pointed term, "radiation brain mom," was used to deride these concerned mothers as hysterical and irrational. Avoiding foods from the affected areas, or even just expressing concerns about food safety, was understood less as maternal dedication to the health of one's family than as a lack of rationality, patriotism, and sympathy for the affected areas.
Drawing on feminist science and technology studies, I situate this sanctioning of mothers in a wider history of women's struggles related to scientific uncertainty and how their actions to respond to it often face social disapproval. Embedded in widespread gender stereotypes and deploying the full affective force of shame and guilt, fuhyohigai constituted a critical power of the regime of food policing that was convenient for the elites who wanted to maintain the façade of normality after the accident. Seen as irrational or even discriminatory and prejudiced, mothers faced not only uncertainty about invisible contamination, but also social sanctions against their efforts to make sense of it.
Contaminated Food
The Fukushima nuclear accident caused a significant release of radioactive materials, and within a week of the earthquake, reports of contaminated food started to appear. On March 19, the government announced that it had found contaminated food, and subsequently ordered the governors of four prefectures to suspend shipments of spinach and milk. The contamination was not limited to Fukushima. In the same week, spinach from Takahagi City (Ibaraki Prefecture, 80–120 km away from the plants) had 15,020 Bq/kg of iodine 131, and similarly high values were found in spinach from other parts of Ibaraki Prefecture. Social anxiety increased as the media began to report contamination ("More and More Food Found above Standards" 2011; "Twenty-Five out of Forty-Five Fukushima Vegetables above Radioactive Standards" 2011).
Discoveries of contamination continued through the year: By January 2012, 1,048 cases of contamination had been detected by prefectural governments out of 89,786 samples (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare 2012), and more than eighty government orders had been issued to stop shipments of food based on the Special Measures on Nuclear Disaster Act (Radiation Council 2012).
But even this long list, many believed, was only partial, and there were several reasons for their suspicions. First, many people felt that the government was testing an insufficient number of samples. Only 16,829 tests were conducted in the first six months after the accident (Endo 2012, 84). In comparison, Belarus was reported to conduct 30,000 tests per day (Onuma 2013).
Furthermore, the government's criteria of what was contaminated and what was not depended upon what it started calling provisionary regulatory values (PRV). The Food Sanitation Act, which sets most of Japan's food safety standards, did not have any standards for radiation. The government scrambled to come up with standards that would guide their disaster response, and adopted the values they found in a report by the Nuclear Safety Commission, which they called PRVs ("provisionary" because they were meant to be temporary until formal standards were set). These PRVs were, for cesium, 300 Bq/kg for drinking water, milk, and other dairy products and 500 Bq/kg for other foods. Although the PRVs became the de facto government standards, their social credibility was tenuous from the beginning. Many citizens felt that they were too lax. While they were comparable to or stricter than standards in the United States and EU (table 1.1), critics pointed out that some of the standards were less strict than the WHO recommendations; for example, for tap water, the PRVs set 200 Bq/kg as the upper limit, while WHO's recommendation is 10 Bq/kg. Nonprofit organizations reported that some countries affected by Chernobyl had adopted even stricter standards, such as Ukraine's cesium 137 standard for drinking water of 2 Bq/L, and Belarus's of 10 Bq/L for drinking water and 100 Bq/L for dairy products (Foodwatch 2011). Some experts also called for stricter values; for instance, a professor of medicine, Nagayama Junya, at Kyusyu University proposed that cesium standards should be set at 20 Bq/kg for milk and other dairy products and 50 Bq/kg for vegetables ("Prof. Nagayama of Kyusyu University" 2012). That some foods consumed in large quantities by Japanese — fish and rice, for instance — did not have lower PRVs was also criticized. Nonetheless, until the official standards were adopted in April 2012, the government screened food according to the PRVs, possibly underplaying the extent of contamination.
Like Kobayashi-san, many citizens became highly concerned about the possibility of contaminated food. A number of consumer surveys show that Kobayashi-san was not an anomaly in worrying about and changing her food purchasing patterns after the accident. For instance, a survey by the Federation of Consumer Cooperatives in July 2011 found a large percentage of consumers (42 percent) trying to avoid food from the affected areas (Seko 2012). Similarly, in a government consumer survey in 2013, more than 60 percent of respondents said they cared about the place of origin of the food they buy, and of that group, 41 percent attributed their concern to fears about radiation; 19 percent responded that they would hesitate to buy Fukushima produce; and 15 percent said the same about produce from Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate Prefectures (Consumer Affairs Agency 2013).
Consumers also changed not only what they bought but also where they bought it. Like Kobayashi-san, who decided to buy more imported foods at Costco and gave up on the idea of local food, many consumers in the northern and northeastern parts of Japan began to avoid buying locally, turning away from the food localism that had been popular before the accident (Kimura and Nishiyama 2008). Farmers' markets were hit particularly hard in these areas. For instance, one study of farmers' markets in Fukushima found that they experienced a significant decline in sales (Endo and Matsumoto 2012). Farmers' markets in Miyagi Prefecture similarly suffered from a decline in the number of customers and the volume of sales (Miyagi Prefecture Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries 2012).
Consumer avoidance of foods from the affected areas had significant impacts on prices. While the decline in sales of foods from the affected areas can be partly attributed to the decrease in the overall prefectural population, the decline in demand was a national trend, not limited to the affected areas. For instance, Fukushima was famous for its peaches and sold them nationwide, but Fukushima peaches after the accident were priced 20 percent lower than the national average (Cabinet Office 2014a). From 2009 to 2012, the average price of Fukushima vegetables on the national wholesale market decreased by 18.7 percent, a much larger decline than the national average (0.2 percent) (Bank of Japan 2013). The price decline was not limited to Fukushima and impacted farmers in neighboring prefectures. Farmers in Miyagi Prefecture, for instance, reported lower prices for their produce (Miyagi Prefecture Division of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries 2012). Food producers from the eastern and northeastern prefectures suffered significantly from the damage to their products' reputations after the Fukushima accident.
Fuhyohigai: Censoring Concerned Women
Fuhyohigai became an overarching concept that was frequently used to describe the mechanism of the decline in popularity of foods from affected areas. After the accident, fuhyohigai specifically referred to the sales declines from concerns related to radiation contamination. It became one of the major economic concerns of the government, as it was estimated to have caused tremendous economic damage — a government estimate put fuhyohigai damages at $13 billion in 2011 alone (Office of the Prime Minister 2011).
The concept of fuhyohigai was useful to producers because it included a range of damages caused by the accident but otherwise not recognized. When food was found to be contaminated according to government standards and hence banned from sale by government orders, the producers could be compensated for the loss. But even when the food was not officially contaminated, consumer avoidance resulted in the loss of sales. This was the scenario in which the concept of fuhyohigai was helpful to food producers because it allowed them to claim the reduction in sales as accident derived.
Besides this legal function, which was undoubtedly important and useful, the concept of fuhyohigai had complex social functions as a mechanism of food policing. According to professor of communications Sekiya Naoya, the term was originally coined in the 1980s to characterize a decline in sales of seafood due to nuclear reactor accidents. Its use became commonplace to describe various cases of consumer avoidance, such as of beef after the bovine spongiform encephalopathy scandal and of spinach due to dioxin from incinerators (Sekiya 2003). Fuhyohigai is a morally charged concept that redefines what might be simply described as changes in consumer preferences as regrettable misbehavior based on false rumors. In a context of scientific uncertainty, fuhyohigai is a powerful tool to demarcate certain views as rumor while legitimizing others as fact. After the Fukushima accident, the concept was used to describe people who avoided foods from affected areas as fearmongers who caused much suffering to the food producers.
Fuhyohigai crystallizes the combined power of scientism, neoliberalism, and gender, the three social forces I discussed in the introduction. Fuhyohigai privileges science as the arbiter of truth and presents it as uncontested and unambiguous, while addressing neoliberal concerns about economic vitality. Furthermore, as I describe below in detail, post-Fukushima fuhyohigai particularly targeted women as dangerously irrational.
For the readers of this book outside of Japan, it might be difficult to imagine how widespread and harsh the fuhyohigai discourse was against those who expressed concerns about radiation. A good illustration might be the case of Oishinbo and how it became a national scandal. Oishinbo, a comic series widely popular since the 1980s, centers on a gourmand's quest for delicacies. In April 2014, the comic had a story where the main protagonist and his father had nasal bleeding after coming back from Fukushima, which was attributed to radiation exposure. This story caused a huge national scandal that was framed as a problematic case of fuhyohigai, making the comic a target of strong criticism from the media, the government, and scientists. Various government institutions, including the Ministry of Environment and the Fukushima prefectural government, went so far as to issue statements criticizing Oishinbo. High-ranking politicians such as the mayor of Fukushima City, the secretary of the Reconstruction Agency, and the governor of Fukushima Prefecture made media appearances criticizing the comic as fuhyohigai ("Oishinbo Hyogen Ni Zannen" 2014). A professor from Fukushima University was quoted in the comic as saying, "I do not think it is possible to decontaminate the large area of Fukushima so as to enable people to live there"; he was reprimanded by the university, whose president said he "should be aware of his position as a university professor" and "refrain from spreading fuhyohigai" ("Oishinbo Hamonhirogaru" 2014). Joining the Oishinbo bashing was Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who, speaking of the comic, said, "the government needs to tackle baseless fuhyo[higai]" ("Abe Shusho Konkyo" 2014). In response, some people in the affected areas said that they did actually suffer from various health symptoms including nasal bleeding ("Oishinbo Hanadi Konkyoaru Senmonkara Hanronkaiken" 2014), but these rebuttals were brushed aside as simply nonscientific anecdotes. There might have been little scientific proof that radiation at the Fukushima level would cause nasal bleeding, but the politically charged responses to the comic reflect the pervasive and harsh censoring of radiation concerns in the name of fuhyohigai.
Fuhyohigai criticism implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) targeted women. In general, women were found to be more concerned about food safety. For instance, a 2012 survey of consumers by the government showed that while radiation contamination was the biggest concern related to food safety for both men and women, 87.6 percent of women in comparison with 68.9 percent of men expressed this concern. Moreover, a higher percentage of women than men said they changed their food purchasing patterns (Food Safety Commission 2012). The stronger concerns of women about radiation contamination of food are related to a broader concern and wariness about nuclear energy historically found among more women than men. In Japan and other advanced capitalist societies, studies of people's attitudes toward radiation risks have usually found that women are more concerned about radiation contamination and its health impacts than men (Flynn, Slovic, and Mertz 1994; Watanuki 1987).
Women were also seen as culpable, as they were the ones who shouldered most food-related tasks in households. While the professional culinary scene is dominated by men, domestic food tasks are done primarily by women in Japan (Holthus and Tanaka 2013). Shopping for ingredients and cooking food at home are mostly women's jobs in Japan, which makes their role highly visible in food-related scandals.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists by Aya Hirata Kimura. Copyright © 2016 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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Table of Contents
Abbreviations ixPreface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. "Moms with Radiation Brain": Gendered Food Policing in the Name of Science 27
2. Engineering of Citizens 55
3. School Lunches: Science, Motherhood, and Joshi Power 78
4. Citizen Radiation-Measuring Organizations 104
5. The Temporality of Contaminants 132
Conclusion 155
Notes 159
References 173
Index 201
What People are Saying About This
"Based on careful research, extensive fieldwork, and a judicious use of political and feminist theory, this book's relevance to political and social developments extends beyond Japan's borders. It is a reminder of the ongoing effects of the Fukushima disaster in Japan at a time when these effects are being increasingly ignored by the global media. A timely and important book, Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists will appeal to scholars of contemporary Japanese society as well as science and technology studies scholars, especially those interested in the gender dimensions of science and technology."
"Riveting and smart, Radiation Brain Moms and Citizen Scientists tracks the efforts made by citizens in post-Fukushima Japan to ensure the safety of their food from radioactive contamination. In the face of state neglect and criticism from fellow Japanese, these initiatives display a 'soft' boldness (versus activist politics). Interweaving stories of citizen scientists and 'radiation brain moms' with sharp theoretics that deconstruct the entanglements of science, neoliberalism, and postfeminism at work, this book is at once powerful and timely."