[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 the COVID-19 pandemic, 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 of lectures reaches into the hundreds.

Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law is an academic discipline that aims to discover issues in existing legal systems and realize policy proposals and legislative amendments to solve them, based on the "legal needs" revealed 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 studies that focuses on the construction process of 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. It continues to explore how to find hope after a disaster to achieve lifestyle reconstruction and recovery, and what legal systems, disaster prevention education, and crisis management are necessary for that purpose.

On March 11, 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, 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 for administrative reform and other areas. Reports of horrific tsunami damage and the nuclear power plant accident left me speechless. Related organizations moved intensely to respond to the emergency. Faced with such a crisis, I spent my days worrying and asking myself what use I could possibly be. In fact, at that time, many lawyers had already headed to the disaster areas and begun consultation activities for the victims. Learning of the existence of lawyers active immediately after the disaster gave me a shock and moved me to action. I had an intuition that the raw voices of 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 my position at the Cabinet Office and took on the role of Director of the Disaster Countermeasures Office at the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA), almost by force. This became the starting point for Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law.

What the free legal consultation activities for victims by lawyers revealed were voices from the disaster areas that could be described as despair. "My family member was swept away by the tsunami at work and is missing. I have lost my livelihood. I have a child who just started high school, but my savings are dwindling, and I can't see a 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 over 40,000 legal consultation cases within about a year.

Ishinomaki City in 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 were sacrificed to the tsunami, and both the industrial zones and the city center suffered catastrophic damage. Looking at a diagram of the trends in the legal needs of victims in the city, a wide variety of disputes over lease agreements, tragic 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 is clear that the challenges of having to use complex legal systems for lifestyle reconstruction were crowded together in a way that reflected the damage situation. The fact that the invisible legal needs of victims were visualized as concrete numerical values had the effect of appealing the reality of the disaster areas to policy makers and the media.

The analysis of victims' legal needs highlighted deficiencies in existing legal systems and accelerated policy proposals by lawyers. For example, the application deadline (period for consideration) 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 in the areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake said, "I don't know the exact assets and cannot judge whether to renounce in such a short period," or "I heard of the system of renunciation of inheritance for the first time." Following swift legislative proposals by lawyers in response to this, a temporary special law of the Civil Code extending the period for consideration to eight months or more was established as lawmaker-initiated legislation in June 2011. Subsequently, the temporary special law was also established as a permanent law (the amended Act on Special Measures concerning Specified Extraordinary Disasters), and measures to extend the period for consideration for renunciation of inheritance have been invoked in the Kumamoto Earthquake, the July 2018 West Japan Heavy Rain, the 2019 East Japan Typhoon, and the July 2020 Heavy Rain.

Furthermore, regarding compensation for damages caused by the nuclear power plant accident, the urgent circumstances of victims—that "court litigation procedures take too much time and place too much burden of proof"—were highlighted. Therefore, the creation of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) procedures that allow for consensus building on compensation through simple, rapid, and flexible procedures was eagerly desired. In the summer of 2011, the establishment of the "Nuclear Damage Compensation Dispute Resolution Center" with quasi-judicial functions within the government was decided. 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, involved in the mediation of settlements and the formulation of compensation standards for over 200 nuclear damage compensation disputes.

The problems faced by victims who can no longer pay mortgages or business loans are serious. Immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake, the only way for insolvent victims to regenerate economically was through bankruptcy procedures. However, there was a high level of concern among victims that legal bankruptcy procedures could not be used because restrictions on new borrowing due to credit information registration would hinder business continuity and lifestyle reconstruction. After energetic policy formation activities by lawyers, the "Guidelines for Private Debt Restructuring for 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, a permanent system was born triggered by temporary guidelines, and it continues to contribute to the lifestyle 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 challenges 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 challenges and wisdom. It is necessary to record wisdom—such as how to discover deficiencies in legal systems, what legal theories to use for 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 establishing "Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law" and opening university courses. I intended to build a platform to pass on the challenges 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," created in the process of repeated classes, and my 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 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 the COVID-19 Pandemic" 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 the COVID-19 pandemic. 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 who experienced it, but must be conveyed to "you, who will carry the future of this country," and who 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 felt 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 a groundbreaking support system is the same as non-existent if it is not communicated to those who truly need it. The more the legal needs of victims are analyzed and their raw voices are highlighted, the more I feel that "preparedness of knowledge" regarding legal systems useful for post-disaster lifestyle reconstruction is indispensable at the stage of disaster prevention education. Therefore, crystallizing the wish for people to be able to take a step of hope without despairing after a disaster, I wrote "Stories of Money and Life to Help You Who Have Been Affected by Disaster" (Kobundo), billed as a "book to stock in your disaster prevention bag."

I want people to know in advance that in times when they feel "I lost everything in the disaster. I can't imagine what to do at all," victims can apply to their local government to receive a "Disaster Victim Certificate" (Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act) that records the status of housing damage. If they also know that they can receive support funds and payment reductions/exemptions through the Disaster Victim Certificate, they 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 lifestyle 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 lifestyle 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, becomes information that greatly influences lifestyle reconstruction. However, there have been many instances where people missed information from the government or media and failed to 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 the period immediately after lives are saved will be overflowing with legal needs regarding lifestyle reconstruction. Knowledge of the legal systems that form the basis for support is indispensable for connecting lives and livelihoods, and it also greatly affects the maintenance of physical, mental, and social health. Disaster prevention education for the preparedness of knowledge is necessary.

Through the consultation activities of lawyers, the legal needs of 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 toughness 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, as a disaster-prone country, has a role to play in 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. My title before the Nepalese legal profession and UN officials was "An Encouragement of Disaster Recovery and Revitalization Law." I introduced the fact 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, using examples such as the renunciation of inheritance and the disaster loan reduction system. 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 law and public policy studies as before, but also with medicine, nursing, welfare, administration, information, economics, safety, crisis management, and other fields across the humanities and sciences. 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. Recognizing that identifying issues in legal systems and proposing improvements, and that laws serve as the information infrastructure for support, also leads to legal education. 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 considers the lives of staff and their families using "Stories of Money and Life to Help You Who Have Been Affected by Disaster" will become indispensable. Taking the 10-year milestone since the Great East Japan Earthquake as a starting point, I 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.