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

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.