Polluted Leisure and Blue Spaces: More-Than-Human Concerns in Fukushima

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Abstract

Following a magnitude 9 earthquake on March 11, 2011, a tsunami swept across the coast of Japan. The earthquake and tsunami disabled the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant causing a nuclear accident. Subsequently, pollution in the form of radiation and concrete seawalls more powerfully influence how blue spaces (seas, oceans, rivers, lakes, and other waterways), health, sport, and leisure compose in Fukushima. In this article, I reflect on some fieldwork experiences while considering “polluted leisure” at this site. My argument is that pollution complicates any health-led blue spaces discourse that attributes positive transformations achieved during leisure-orientated sport in these spaces. Any accretion of health and well-being manifested in blue spaces is shown to simultaneously involve declension, within immediate and/or distant proximity.

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Nature and health.

Terry Hartig, Richard Mitchell, Sjerp de Vries … (2014)

Urbanization, resource exploitation, and lifestyle changes have diminished possibilities for human contact with nature in urbanized societies. Concern about the loss has helped motivate research on the health benefits of contact with nature. Reviewing that research here, we focus on nature as represented by aspects of the physical environment relevant to planning, design, and policy measures that serve broad segments of urbanized societies. We discuss difficulties in defining "nature" and reasons for the current expansion of the research field, and we assess available reviews. We then consider research on pathways between nature and health involving air quality, physical activity, social cohesion, and stress reduction. Finally, we discuss methodological issues and priorities for future research. The extant research does describe an array of benefits of contact with nature, and evidence regarding some benefits is strong; however, some findings indicate caution is needed in applying beliefs about those benefits, and substantial gaps in knowledge remain.