Preparing for disaster: a comparative analysis of education for critical infrastructure collapse

This article explores policy approaches to educating populations for potential critical infrastructure collapse in five different countries: the UK, the US, Germany, Japan and New Zealand. ‘Critical infrastructure’ is not always easy to define, and indeed is defined slightly differently across countries – it includes entities vital to life, such as utilities (water, energy), transportation systems and communications, and may also include social and cultural infrastructure. The article is a mapping exercise of different approaches to critical infrastructure protection and preparedness education by the five countries. The exercise facilitates a comparison of the countries and enables us to identify distinctive characteristics of each country’s approach. We argue that contrary to what most scholars of security have argued, these national approaches diverge greatly, suggesting that they are shaped more by internal politics and culture than by global approaches

‘Kamikaze’ heritage tourism in Japan: A pathway to peace and understanding?

Reflecting the wider belief that international tourism offers the opportunity to encourage peace and understanding amongst peoples and nations, one objective of Japan’s recent tourism development policy is the enhancement of mutual understanding and the promotion of international peace. The purpose of this paper is to consider the extent to which this objective is achievable, particularly in the context of continuing controversy surrounding the country’s confrontation of its twentieth century military heritage in general and its role in the Pacific War in particular. Based on research at two ‘difficult’ heritage sites, Chiran Peace Museum in Kagoshima Prefecture and Yūshūkan War Museum in Tokyo, it explores specifically how the kamikaze phenomenon is commemorated and interpreted for international visitors, in so doing revealing a significant degree of dissonance at both sites. Not only is a selective narrative of heroic sacrifice presented within a wider revisionist history of the Pacific War but also no attempt is made to acknowledge the prevailing cultural context that might underpin a more nuanced understanding of the kamikaze. Hence, the paper concludes that a meaningful opportunity to enhance international understanding has been missed

Finding space for flowing water in Japan's densely populated landscapes

With its rapidly flowing rivers and plentiful summer rainfall, 20th-century Japan has a history of frequent flooding. The effects on its densely populated flood plains have often been devastating. Japan also has one of the world's landscapes most heavily covered in concrete. In recent decades, however, the Japanese state has turned hesitantly to new techniques of releasing of water into the sea buttressed by a concern for ecological well-being. Its 'nature-oriented' river landscaping programme is an attempt to find a more sustainable balance between flowing water and the built terrain, allowing water to make space for itself. Our paper sets this programme in its historical context, relating it back to the premodern period and juxtaposing it to prevalent modernist 20th-century practice. Throughout this paper, we focus on the interweaving of discourse and practice, drawing attention to the 'idiom' of river landscaping as well as to the role of the state in defining this idiom. We argue that a sort of reconciliation is occurring between the contrasting discourses and practices of 'hard' and 'green' engineers