ISSN: 1705-6411 Korstanje ISSN: 1705-6411 Volume 11, Number 3 (September, 2014) Disasters in Postmodern Times: The 2011 Japan Earthquake Dr. Maximiliano Korstanje (University of Palermo, Argentina) Dr. Peter Tarlow (Texas A&M University, Texas, USA) Dr. Geoffrey Skoll (Profesor Emeritus, Buffalo State College, New York, USA) I. Introduction At 2:46 pm on March 11, 2011 Japan suffered one of its most intense and devastating earthquakes. The earthquake measured some 7.9 on the Richter scale. It was so intense that world’s media provided almost non- stop 24-hour news coverage. The reports spoke about the number of victims, and behind the reports the ghost of a Chernobyl-like nuclear disaster was ever present. The earthquake followed by a tsunami not only devastated the Japanese coast but also posed serious risks should the Fukushima nuclear reactor suffer a meltdown. Such a meltdown was a more serious threat to life considering the following relevant aspects: i) The potential for a nuclear accident or worse now became a real possibility, such as a repetition of what occurred in Chernobyl. This potential nuclear threat dominated the public’s anguish. ii) No one was sure what would be the negative results on the locale’s children Humanity once again had to note that in the face of the earthquake and tsunami it was powerless. iii) Television viewers saw the harm that nature had done both on the land and on the sea. Television viewers in other countries realized that no one was immune from the uncontrollable effects of a natural disaster, thus viewers once again noted their impotence in the face of natural disasters. For example, the mass media showed pictures of water invading Japanese cities and destroying all that lay in its path. iv) The media’s emphasis on personal “miracles” not only reinforced the notion of impotence in the face of natural disasters but also introduced an element of the mystical into the tragedy. Media reports of people who saved their lives against all odds served not only as examples of the exception to the rule, but also introduced an element of humility into the arrogance of modernity. Science simply could not solve everything and once again we noted the concept of machina ex deus v) The story was brought home by eyewitness accounts by visitors to Japan E. Quarantelli (2006), a senior sociologist who devoted his life to themes of disasters, revealed that the way lay people perceive the world has changed. To the classical disasters, as narrated by cinema, another type of new, virtualized disaster has taken place. The more recent one indexes events which never happened in reality. Based on suppositions, speculations, and hypotheses, these new types of mediated disasters have become cultural entertainment. Quarantelli´s assertion led Korstanje (2011) to argue that we are living at the end of resiliency, because our ability to learn from events is being undermined. Any virtual disaster not only set the pace for others, but the boundaries between reason and cause become blurred. The more apocalyptic, more intriguing, and more striking the virtualized disasters, the more they pose a challenge to science. A careful review of the media accounting of natural and manmade disasters demonstrates that the media often have their own agenda. For example, although officially denied, a careful observer will note that the media’s experts often seem to have predetermined roles. Their scripts demonstrate that the media hosts not only guide the expert’s message, but should the expert go off script, s/he faces being cut off. Media personalities not only control the microphone but also give themselves a sense of self importance. Thus, news often becomes a spectacle in and of itself. Television reporting often becomes a mixture of sensationalism mixed with scientific truth in which media personalities create an apocalyptic image. The report leaves the viewer with the sensation that the worst is yet to come. If we apply this principle to the case of Japan, we note of how the media spoke about the possibility of a “nuclear Armageddon.” However, just as in the majority of other disasters stories, the case of the potential “nuclear catastrophe” may have had us on the edge of our seats for a while, it vanished as the media turned its attention elsewhere. Jean Baudrillard was one of the philosophers who have devoted his attention to the study of fear and media. His legacy poses the question in a serious debate considering not only how reality is built, but also how disasters are covered and interposed. Baudrillard´s insight influenced the approaches of Korstanje (2010) who recently studied the connection between disasters with the emergence of a new resilience in cultural studies. Stimulating a fertile ground to discuss to what an extent the media created a parallel reality, enrooted in the uncertainty of future, Baudrillard reminds us that in the absence of a clear diagnosis of reasons for a state of emergency, it is