Food safety after Fukushima: Scientific citizenship and the politics of risk

The unprecedented Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011 and its challenges to food safety in Japan inspired a large body of literature. The subsequent eight years have seen scholars discuss problems related to the radioactive contamination of food, soil, air and water from various perspectives. Among those topics are the risk coping strategies of farmers (Kimura & Katano, 2014; Rosenberger, 2016; Yamaguchi, 2016), food safety policies (Berends, 2013; Gilmour, Miyagawa, Kasuga, & Shibuya, 2016; Reiher, 2017), gender, food safety standards and citizen science (Kimura, 2012, 2016; Reiher, 2016). In his book Food Safety after Fukushima: Scientific Citizenship and the Politics of Risk anthropologist Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna tells the stories of mothers, farmers, citizen scientists, food activists and members of consumer co-operatives as they attempted to deal with uncertainties caused by radioactively contaminated food following the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

In an intelligible and absorbing way, this book addresses the question of how the nuclear disaster affected social relations between food consumers and producers, citizens and the state, experts and lay people, parents and schools, and within families. Sternsdorff-Cisterna draws on the concept of scientific citizenship to analyze ‘the dynamics between citizens and the state that were informed by contrasting perceptions of the risks underlying the events following the nuclear accident’ (p. 5). He defines scientific citizenship as ‘a transformation in the relationship between citizens and the state that is catalyzed and mediated by the acquisition of scientific literacy’ (ibid). This transformation occurs when citizens obtain knowledge that enables them to evaluate and draw on expert advice from an avenue other than state expertise to support the health and wellbeing of the people. Sternsdorff-Cisterna argues that food ‘became an area in which citizens could challenge the government narratives of safety after the disaster’ (p. 3). He states that the relationship between citizens and the state was transformed through practices of scientific citizenship like relocating away from Fukushima Prefecture, avoiding food from the affected areas and organizing study groups to learn about radiation and techniques to minimize risk. According to the author, it was through these practices that ‘citizens found a sense of trustworthiness (anshin) in the production, consumption, and circulation of food’ (p. 3) the Japanese state could not provide.

In six chapters, Sternsdorff-Cisterna takes the reader from theoretical reflections on risk, food safety and scientific citizenship (Chapter 1) through the history of the environmental movement in Japan from the perspective of women and mothers (Chapter 2) to insights from participant observation and on-site interviews conducted between 2011 and 2013. Across several chapters, Sternsdorff-Cisterna presents perspectives of various actors on risk communication efforts and trust (Chapter 3); the production and circulation of radiation data (Chapter 4); farming after the nuclear disaster (Chapter 5) and consumers’ strategies to obtain safe food for their families (Chapter 6). In lieu of a conclusion, the book ends with an epilogue, because the author finds that it feels premature to attempt to conclude an ethnographic study about the Fukushima nuclear disaster (p. 139).

Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna has written a short and easy-to-read book based on his 2014 PhD dissertation. The plurality of perspectives and the rich descriptions of learning about radiation and practices employed to avoid unwanted exposure to radionuclides in food are one of the merits of the book. The book’s treatment of food safety in post-Fukushima Japan includes themes like trust, risk communication, citizen monitoring, self-help books, the role of consumer cooperatives, finding and circulating information on radiation through social media, food labels and reading groups. The reader travels with the anthropologist from Tokyo to Fukushima prefecture, joins lectures on radionuclides in food, visits government risk communicators and citizen testing facilities and learns about organic farmers’ strategies to decontaminate soil and trees. Most impressive are the many well-told stories of individuals and their struggles to fight radiation. The reader can relate to and sympathizes with the mother who opens a vegetable shop where she sells products from a farmer in Hiroshima prefecture, or the farmer from Fukushima who quit agriculture, because she had ethical concerns, thus representing the moral dilemma many Fukushima farmers faced after 3.11. Thus, the book makes a great empirical contribution to the scholarship on post-Fukushima Japan.

In its plurality however lies one of few weaknesses of the book. The chapters, although descriptive, do not reveal why the author selected certain people, events and topics over others and what they represent within the larger discourse on food safety in Japan. Why did he talk to organic farmers but not to conventional farmers? Is there a connection between the individual stories and a narrative that links them? The book’s argument would have benefited from a greater involvement with other scholarly work on food safety in post-Fukushima Japan, and also from discussing the empirical findings in the context of the debates on gender and environmental movements in Japan that are presented in the second chapter of the book. If and how scientific citizenship has actually challenged the government narratives of safety after the disaster and the link between “the affective’ and ‘the political’ (p. 142) are not fully explored in the book.

Overall, this book is a beautifully written and easy to read account of the challenges Japanese society has faced by the radioactive contamination of food in the first three years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Nicolas Sternsdorff-Cisterna provides manifold insights into the perspectives of concerned consumers and farmers in post-Fukushima Japan, and introduces their strategies for consuming and producing safe food on an everyday base. Scholars and students of Japan and food safety, as well as the general public will benefit from the many examples and rich descriptions of individuals’ practices in a post-disaster society.