žižek archive
archive / stories / Fukushima and Tokyo evacuation

Fukushima and Tokyo evacuation

anecdote · personal/autobiographical · retold in 24 talks

Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Žižek's friend and theorist of catastrophes, reported that after Fukushima the Japanese government secretly panicked at the prospect of evacuating all 30 million inhabitants of the Tokyo area, illustrating the scale of trans-state action that contemporary crises demand.

2015: 1 talk 2016: 4 talks 2017: 4 talks 2018: 3 talks 2019: 3 talks 2020: 2 talks 2021: 1 talk 2023: 1 talk
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026

As told 19

“the Japanese government was in total panic because it looked as if the pollution will be so strong that they would have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area, thirty million people.”
26:35 The Guardian Live Event2016-04-19 · 1:16:37
“they thought that the radiation will be so strong that they have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area”
“for one day approximately the Japanese government was in total despair because it looks that the pollution will be so strong that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area”
32:45 Another End is Possible2020-12-17 · 1:17:39

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

Its cast and sources

populated by
alongside works

Every retelling 19

26:35 The Guardian Live Event2016-04-19 · 1:16:37
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Žižek's friend and theorist of catastrophes, reported that after Fukushima the Japanese government secretly panicked at the prospect of evacuating all 30 million inhabitants of the Tokyo area, illustrating the scale of trans-state action that contemporary crises demand., illustrating need for transnational action,principal contradiction of new world order
His friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, in Fukushima two days after the tsunami, told him the Japanese government briefly panicked that radiation would force evacuating the entire Tokyo area, with nowhere for those people to go, showing the need for transnational cooperation., illustrating the commons,transnational cooperation
32:45 Another End is Possible2020-12-17 · 1:17:39
Žižek's friend Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who went to Fukushima as part of a European delegation, reported that for roughly one day the Japanese government contemplated evacuating the entire Tokyo region; the rational solution, ask Russia for Siberian land, was politically impossible, illustrating the need for new forms of international cooperation., illustrating limits of nation-state in catastrophe,international cooperation,ecological catastrophe
French theorist Jean-Pierre Dupuy was in Japan days after Fukushima and revealed the government seriously contemplated evacuating all of Tokyo, a scale of catastrophe requiring global coordination that market logic cannot provide., illustrating global coordination necessity,ecological catastrophe,state responsibility
1:20:08 A Defence of Eurocentrism2016-06-14 · 2:02:30
Jean-Pierre Dupuy told Žižek that for several hours after Fukushima the Japanese government seriously considered evacuating the entire Tokyo area, an event requiring transnational solutions (like asking Russia for Siberian land) that the current political framework cannot handle., illustrating need for transnational action,ecology,limits of nation-state
Jean-Pierre Dupuy, as EU special envoy, told Žižek that for several hours the Japanese government considered evacuating all 30 million people from the Tokyo area. Used to illustrate that capitalism cannot respond to ecological catastrophe at this scale, market mechanisms are simply inapplicable., illustrating ecology as limit of capitalism,commons of external nature