Thinking About Risk: Moving Away from "Leaving It to Experts"

2022/10/27

This book introduces basic discussions on risk from a psychological perspective, using risk communication as a keyword.

The impetus for writing this book was receiving a long, handwritten request for a manuscript from an editor at Chikuma Shobo. Since receiving a handwritten letter is such a rare experience, I accepted immediately.

I decide on the structure of everything I write, including academic papers, before I start writing. Therefore, I spent a lot of time discussing the structure. In a paper, one tends to start with definitions, like "What is risk communication?" I am truly grateful to the editor who gave me careful advice, suggesting things like, "How about this kind of chapter structure?" instead.

I kept two points in mind while writing. First, as I proposed and the editor agreed, I tried to avoid including recent examples like COVID-19 as much as possible. If I use recent examples, they might be easy to understand now, but there is a high possibility that the details will be forgotten in a few years. Instead, I actively introduced cases that are likely to happen again in the future, even if they are old stories. For example, many cases of pollution and drug-induced health disasters require a long time for the certification of aftereffects and for trials. Similar things can happen even with events occurring in real-time.

Second, since 2016, I had intermittently written a series of about five essays on crisis management for Iwanami Shoten's magazine "Kagaku" (Science), as well as two separate essays related to COVID-19, so I took the most care to ensure the content did not overlap with those.

However, there were parts where I couldn't strictly adhere to my own rules, so there are occasional mentions of COVID-19 and some slight overlaps with "Kagaku." Regarding this, I can only hope for the reader's indulgence.

I have received feedback from a friend who is incapable of flattery, saying it is the best book currently available in this field, so I would highly recommend everyone purchase it.

Just between us, I have included subtle "ikezu" (wicked/sarcastic) expressions that I acquired during my roughly 20 years of living in Kyoto throughout the book. I would be even happier if you could include finding them as one of the pleasures of reading carefully.

Thinking About Risk: Moving Away from "Leaving It to Experts"

Toshiko Kikkawa

Chikuma Shinsho

240 pages, 946 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.