[Special Feature: 10 Years Since 3.11] An Encouragement of Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law: 10 Years Since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Legal Resilience

2021/03/05

It has been about 10 years since the "Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law" course was established at Keio University. Classes began at the Law School in 2012 and at the undergraduate level the following year, and more than 4,000 students have already graduated. In the 2020 academic year, when classes moved online due to the impact of COVID-19, a record high of over 700 students enrolled. Looking back over these 10 years, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to establish related courses in Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law at Iwate University, Fukushima University, Nagaoka University of Technology, Chuo University, Aoyama Gakuin University, Nihon Fukushi University, and others. Including one-off lectures and training sessions, the number reaches into the hundreds.

Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law is an academic field that aims to discover issues in existing legal systems and realize policy proposals and legislative amendments to solve them, based on "legal needs" identified by analyzing the voices of disaster victims collected through free legal consultation activities by lawyers. It is not limited to the field of jurisprudence, which mainly focuses on legal interpretation, but is also a field of public policy that focuses on the process of constructing legal systems. A major role of Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law is to be involved in policy formation, record that process, and connect it to the future. How can we find hope after a disaster and achieve livelihood reconstruction and recovery? We continue to search for the legal systems, disaster prevention education, and crisis management necessary for that purpose.

On March 11, 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred, I was working as a specialist official with a lawyer's qualification at the Secretariat of the Government Revitalization Unit of the Cabinet Office. A year and a half had already passed since I took charge of policy planning such as administrative reform. Reports of horrific tsunami damage that left me speechless and the nuclear power plant accident. Related organizations moving intensely to respond immediately to the emergency. Facing such a crisis, I spent my days worrying and asking myself what on earth I could do to be of help. In fact, at that time, many lawyers had already headed to the disaster areas and begun consultation activities for the victims. Knowing the existence of lawyers active immediately after the disaster, I was shocked and moved to action. I had an intuition that the raw voices of the victims collected by lawyers would become the factual basis for legal systems indispensable for recovery policy. Wishing to play a part in supporting the recovery, I concurrently held a position with the Cabinet Office and almost forced my way into becoming the Director of the Disaster Countermeasures Office (headquarters for disaster control) of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA). This became the starting point for Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law.

What the free legal consultation activities for disaster victims by lawyers revealed were voices from the disaster areas that could be described as despair. "My family was swept away by the tsunami at work and is missing. I've lost my livelihood. I have a child who just started high school, but my savings are dwindling, and I can't see the future." "I lost my home, which was also my workplace. Tens of millions of yen remain on my mortgage. I can't go bankrupt because it would lead to closing my business, but I can't pay the loan. It's hopeless." I was speechless at the voices heard immediately after the disaster. At the same time, I became even more determined that these earnest voices should be recorded, visualized, and reflected in policy without wasting a single one. Together with many lawyers and researchers, we carried out a project at the JFBA to collect and database more than 40,000 legal consultation cases in just over a year.

Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, was a city with a population of about 160,000 at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake, but more than 3,600 people fell victim to the tsunami, and both the industrial zones and the city center suffered catastrophic damage. Looking at the diagram of the trends in legal needs of disaster victims in the city, a wide variety of disputes over lease agreements, painful cries of being unable to pay mortgages, the grief of bereaved families and despair over an uncertain future, and voices seeking public benefits and housing support emerged vividly. It can be seen that issues requiring the use of complex legal systems for livelihood reconstruction were crowded together in a way that reflected the damage situation. The fact that the invisible legal needs of disaster victims were visualized as specific numerical values had the effect of appealing the reality of the disaster areas to policymakers and the media.

The analysis of the legal needs of disaster victims highlighted deficiencies in existing legal systems and accelerated policy proposals by lawyers. For example, the application deadline (deliberation period) for "renunciation of inheritance" procedures to avoid inheriting large debts is within three months from the start of inheritance according to the Civil Code. However, many voices from the bereaved families in the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake said, "I don't know the exact assets, and I can't judge whether to renounce in such a short period," or "It's the first time I've heard of the system of renunciation of inheritance." In response to this, quick legislative proposals by lawyers led to the enactment of a temporary special law of the Civil Code in June 2011 through member-initiated legislation, extending the deliberation period to eight months or more. Subsequently, the temporary special law was also established as a permanent law (Revised Act on Special Measures for Specified Extraordinary Disasters), and measures to extend the deliberation period for renunciation of inheritance have been invoked in the Kumamoto Earthquake, the Western Japan Heavy Rain, the 2019 East Japan Typhoon, and the July 2020 Heavy Rain.

Regarding compensation for damages caused by the nuclear power plant accident, the urgent circumstances of the victims were highlighted, stating that "court litigation procedures take too much time and place too much burden of proof." Therefore, the creation of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) that enables consensus building for compensation through simple, rapid, and flexible procedures was eagerly desired. In the summer of 2011, the government decided to establish the "Nuclear Damage Compensation Dispute Resolution Center" with quasi-judicial functions. Although my contribution was small, I was involved in the establishment of the organization during my term at the Cabinet Office. From December of the same year, one month after leaving the Cabinet Office, until July 2017, I served as the Chief Investigator of the center and was involved in the mediation of settlements and the formulation of compensation standards for more than 200 nuclear damage compensation disputes.

The problems faced by disaster victims who can no longer pay their mortgages or business loans are serious. Immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake, the only way for victims in a state of insolvency to recover economically was through bankruptcy procedures. However, there was a high level of concern among victims that legal bankruptcy procedures could not be used because of restrictions on new borrowing due to credit information registration, which would hinder business continuity and livelihood reconstruction. After energetic policy formation activities by lawyers, the "Guidelines for Private Liquidation of Individual Debtors" (Disaster Loan Reduction System) was born in July 2011 as a special measure for the Great East Japan Earthquake. This is a groundbreaking support system where, by reaching an agreement with financial institutions, disaster-affected debtors can have loans exceeding a certain amount forgiven while retaining public support funds, a reasonable amount of cash and deposits, and certain assets. Since it is not registered in credit information, there is no disadvantage of restrictions on new borrowing. Subsequently, in December 2015, the "Guidelines for Debt Restructuring for Victims of Natural Disasters," which can be used for general natural disasters to which the Disaster Relief Act applies, were enacted. In this way, permanent systems were born triggered by temporary guidelines, and they continue to contribute to the livelihood reconstruction of victims in many natural disasters, including the Kumamoto Earthquake.

New recovery policies after the Great East Japan Earthquake would not have been realized without the activities of predecessors who knew the policy issues from past disasters such as the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. Now is the time for the generation involved in the Great East Japan Earthquake to fulfill the role of passing on issues and wisdom. It is necessary to record wisdom such as how to discover deficiencies in legal systems, what legal theories to use to create proposals, who the stakeholders are, which specialized fields to collaborate with, how to handle media and form public opinion, and how to create cooperation with the government and the Diet, as a "trajectory of recovery policy."

That is when I thought of the creation of "Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law" and the opening of university courses. I intended to build a platform to pass on the issues and wisdom of legal policy. I would like to express my gratitude again to Keio University, which empathized with me, and to the universities and research institutions with which I was able to collaborate thereafter. The textbooks "Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law" and "Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law II" produced in the process of repeated classes, and the doctoral dissertation "The System of Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law: The Trajectory of Legal Needs and Recovery Policy," were written for our children who may face crises in the future, recording the trajectory of recovery policies that have realized policies by raising voices without giving up amidst despair during disasters.

In October 2020, the "Special Provisions for Applying the 'Guidelines for Debt Restructuring for Victims of Natural Disasters' to COVID-19" were enacted. Based on emergency proposals by lawyers, the mechanism of the "Disaster Loan Reduction System" came to be used for the relief of individual debtors who fell into crisis due to the impact of COVID-19. This could not have been achieved without the know-how of lawyers who proposed and realized the disaster loan reduction system triggered by the Great East Japan Earthquake. Such knowledge must not be kept only by those with experience but must be conveyed to "you who will bear the future of this country" and have not yet experienced a crisis.

"If only I had known, I might have been saved. There might have been a different future." For example, lawyers have encountered many situations where they thought that if a victim had known about the "Disaster Loan Reduction System," gone to a financial institution without despairing, and been able to start the procedure, they would not have had to give up on business continuity. Even if it is a groundbreaking support system, if it is not conveyed to those who truly need it, it is the same as not existing. The more the legal needs of disaster victims are analyzed and their raw voices are highlighted, the more I feel that "knowledge preparation" of legal systems useful for livelihood reconstruction after a disaster is indispensable at the stage of disaster prevention education. Therefore, the crystallization of the wish to be able to take a step of hope without despairing after a disaster is "Stories of Money and Life to Help You Who Have Been Affected by a Disaster" (Kobundo), which is billed as a "book to stock in your disaster prevention bag."

Especially when you feel that "I lost everything in the disaster. I can't imagine at all what I should do because it's so overwhelming," I want you to know in advance that by applying to the local government, victims can receive a "Disaster Victim Certificate" (Basic Act on Disaster Management) that records the status of housing damage and other information. If you also know that you can receive support funds and payment reductions/exemptions through the Disaster Victim Certificate, you will be able to find a ray of hope even in despair.

For victims who can use the "Natural Disaster Debt Restructuring Guidelines" to reduce or exempt mortgages and individual business loans, the fate of their livelihood reconstruction will change significantly. However, because they do not know the system, it is quite possible that they will be forced into bankruptcy or business closure.

Knowledge of benefits indispensable for livelihood reconstruction, such as the "Support Grant for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims" (Act on Support for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims) of up to 3 million yen paid when a home is completely destroyed, and the "Disaster Condolence Grant" (Act on Provision of Disaster Condolence Grant) of up to 5 million yen paid to bereaved families, is information that greatly influences livelihood reconstruction. However, there have been many instances where people missed information from the government or media and did not apply simply because they lacked knowledge.

I do not doubt that disaster prevention education should be practiced with the primary goal of protecting lives. On the other hand, one must also be able to imagine in advance that immediately after lives are saved, there will be an abundance of legal needs regarding livelihood reconstruction. Knowledge of the legal systems that form the basis of support is indispensable for connecting lives and livelihoods, and it also greatly affects the maintenance of health in physical, mental, and social aspects. Disaster prevention education for knowledge preparation is necessary.

Through the consultation activities of lawyers, legal needs of disaster victims that could not be overcome by existing legal systems were exposed. Issues are gradually improved through legislative amendments and new legislation, and society gradually acquires "resilience." Resilience is a word that means the flexibility to recover from disasters and accidents. In Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law, the way legal systems repeatedly transform and social systems acquire resilience is called "Legal Resilience."

Resilience is also a keyword that appears multiple times in the sections on urban development (Goal 11) and disaster countermeasures (Goal 13) of the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Japan, being a disaster-prone country, bears the role of communicating to the world that it has the wisdom to recover from natural disasters—resilience. In October 2015, I had the opportunity to visit Nepal for a keynote speech at the "Seminar on Sharing Experiences of Earthquake-Related Disputes" co-hosted by the Supreme Court of Nepal and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). This was following the major earthquake in April of that year that killed about 8,500 people in the country. The title of the presentation before the Nepalese legal profession and UN officials was "An Encouragement of Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law." I introduced, using examples such as renunciation of inheritance and the disaster loan reduction system, that while Japan has the vulnerability of frequent disasters, it has a history of acquiring resilience by creating new legal systems every time it encounters a disaster, making temporary systems permanent, and preparing for the next disaster. I also emphasized that because the administration of benefits such as the Support Grant for Reconstructing Livelihoods of Disaster Victims is carried out under the "Rule of Law" based on legislation, fair and equitable support can be realized. I believe there was no small significance in speaking about "Legal Resilience" to Nepal, which had only recently democratized.

Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law aims to further deepen collaboration not only with jurisprudence and public policy but also with fields beyond the humanities and sciences, such as medicine, nursing, welfare, administration, information, economy, safety, and crisis management. Collaboration with professionals such as doctors, dentists, nurses, social workers, and financial planners is also expanding. Development as lifelong learning education in libraries and community centers will also play a role in broadening the base of disaster prevention. Disaster prevention education that looks at life after a disaster is attracting attention for its high affinity with consumer education and financial education. Knowing the trajectory of recovery policies created from the voices of victims is expected to become something that can be called sovereign education that fosters awareness as a sovereign. Identifying issues in legal systems and proposing improvements, and recognizing that laws serve as the information infrastructure for support, also leads to legal education. In order to increase the feasibility of Business Continuity Plans (BCP) for companies and medical institutions and to strengthen internal control systems and risk management, disaster prevention training that also considers the lives of staff and their families using "Stories of Money and Life to Help You Who Have Been Affected by a Disaster" will become indispensable. Taking the 10-year milestone since the Great East Japan Earthquake as a starting point, I intend to consider it my future duty to ensure that the Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law, which has been practiced to build a platform for acquiring legal resilience, is passed on to the next generation.