前夜の東北

摘要

There will no doubt be many people whose first encounter with the towns and villages of the Tohoku region was in the devastating images of the tsunami following March 11. It is of course true that the Great East Japan Earthquake also inflicted great damage and loss on the northern part of the Kanto region, the rest of Japan, and indeed the world beyond, but in the case of the 'Tohoku' region in particular, this encounter seems to have been of a rather special nature for us. A certain 'region' is suddenly exposed to the nation's attention day after day, it is already an area of hopeless devastation, and there is no way of knowing how its landscapes and lifestyles were before the earthquake. This odd situation is part of the experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Why did this situation arise? And what kind of a place was Tohoku? Tohoku still tends to be used as a kind of catch-all for a whole range of prejudices, expectations and political phenomena.%東北の街や村を、3.11以後の衝撃的な津波の映像によって初めて知ったという人は多いだろう。言うまでもなく東日本大震災は北開東をはじめ全国あるいは世界的にも大きな被害・損失を出しているが、とりわけ「東北」については、私たちはいささか特殊な出会い方をしたように思える。ある「地方」がいきなり国民の眼に連日晒され、なおかつそこはすでに絶望的な被災地であり、震災以前の景観や生活を知るすべもない－こうした異様な経験が、東日本大患災には含まれている。なぜそうなったのか。そして東北とはどのような場所だったのか。「東北」は、今なおさまざまな偏見や期待や政治を封じ込めた一種の符牒のように一括りに語られがちである。