Main description:

This book examines how relationships between guardians and companion animals were challenged during a large-scale disaster: the tsunami of March 2011 and the following nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The author interrogates: 1) How did guardians and their companion animals survive the large disaster?; 2) Why was the relationship between guardians and their companion animals ignored during and after a disaster?; and 3) What structures and/or mechanisms shaped the outcomes for animals and their guardians? Through a critical realist framework, combined with a theoretical perspective developed by Roy Bhaskar and his colleagues, the author argues that despite the trivialization of companion animals by government officials, relationships between animals and guardians were often able to be maintained, in some cases through great pains by the guardians. While the notion of human-animal relationships in Japan has thus far been dominated by economic logic, the author reveals dynamics between guardians and companion animal transcend such structures, forging the concept of "bonding rights."

Contents:

Preface

Chapter 1: Japanese animals in calamity

Chapter 2: Methodology

Part 1: The Tsunami in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures

Chapter 3: Everything I did was for Baron

Chapter 4: Surviving with companion animals

Part 2: The Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima

Chapter 5: I have lost the meaning to live

Chapter 6: Making choices regarding companion animals

Chapter 7: Complexities in Fukushima

Part 3: Social Structures and Causal Mechanisms

Chapter 8: Applying Critical Realism to real life

Chapter 9: Advancing the notion of "bonding rights"