“We are in jail!”: seawalls and landscape justice in post-disaster Japan

Annaclaudia Martini

Landscape Research, 2025, vol. 50, issue 6, 953-966

Abstract: After the 2011 triple disaster, the Japanese government started the construction of an almost 400 km long and 15 m high seawalls and breakwaters system along the coast of Tohoku. Seawalls are seen by the Japanese government as necessary for the safety of the communities, but their construction has been met with outrage and opposition by local communities all along the coast. This article explores how discourses and protests against seawalls as infrastructures imbued with political value are constructed by local communities in coastal Tohoku as a form of struggle over landscape justice. Local practices have become relevant and popular again in the communities as alternatives to the seawall –even though they cannot be fully adopted, as the contested construction of the seawall proceeds steadily.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/01426397.2025.2465678

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