earticle

영어

The present study introduces the changes in roles of disaster volunteers in Japanese society from the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) earthquake to the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake. Disaster volunteers have played essential roles in disaster relief in Japanese society since Kobe Earthquake.
Currently, many non-profit organizations and their nationwide networks were established to coordinate individual, unaffiliated volunteers: Once a major disaster occurs, some of these disaster non-profit organizations dispatch advance groups and coordinate the disaster relief activities with other NPOs and local governments. Disaster volunteers, therefore, have become a part of Japanesesociety to provide disaster relief. A few months before we celebrated the 10th anniversary of disaster volunteers, another major earthquake occurred in Niigata. It hit mountainous rural areas, while Kobe is known as one of the most industrialized cities.
The villages had suffered from depopulation and aging before the earthquake, and the disaster uncovered these veiled problems abruptly to the eyes of the society. Hence, some lessons were applied to Chuetsu, but there were many new issues that disaster volunteers had to deal with for the first time. The experiences in Chuetsu led disaster volunteers to pay close attention to the local life in villages and re-examined their own roles in disaster relief. Consequently, the roles of disaster volunteers changed from efficient disaster response as in Kobe to empowerment especially toward and during revitalization of survivors’ life as in Chuetsu. The present study describes the transformation of roles of disaster volunteers based on my own long-term action research projects both in Kobe and Chuetsu as a social scientist as well as a core member of a non-profit organization established in Kobe in 1995.