Exposure to Volcanic Hazards, and Influence on Perception: A Case Study in Japan, Ten Years After the Unzen Fugendake Eruption

Christopher Gomez (1)

1 LGP - Laboratoire de géographie physique : Environnements Quaternaires et Actuels

This study aims at understanding the perception of volcanic hazards that adults and pupils have in the province of Nagasaki Kyushu, ten years after the volcanic eruption of the Unzen Fugendake. The Unzen Fugendake started to erupt in 1991 and produced several pyroclastic flows lahars and ashes rains. Shimabara city, located on the foot of the volcano was severely stroke by the eruption. Ten years after this eruption, a study was carried on in Shimabara city and in Saikai city - away from any volcano - to compare the inhabitants' perceptions of volcanic hazards and the importance they have among other natural hazards. This study was carried on through questionnaires and interviews for the adults, as for the pupils we collected drawing, completed by informal interviews. From this survey, we can observe some signs of trauma among people who had been under direct exposure of the eruption, whereas indirectly exposed respondents did not show any sign of it. It seems that natural hazards' personal experience is always considered like the most important whenever the scale of the natural hazards that are compared. In Shimabara, majority of the respondents consider that the Unzen's eruption was the worst disaster in Japan for the twenty last years, whereas Saikai city's inhabitants hardly mentioned it, highlighting the “o-ame” event that triggered exceptional floods in Nagasaki city and in their own town. In the end, this study is also showing the difference between pupils and adults' perceptions. Indeed the first diverging point concerns the fact that pupils are highlighting the natural hazard itself, whereas adults preferentially highlighted the vulnerability of human beings and constructions. The second diverging point between adults and pupils is the fact that both cities children' perceptions do not vary as much as adults' ones do. Due to the absence of any direct exposure to volcanic eruption, the children' perception seems to tend towards some homogeneity, based on second-hand information.

Mots clés: Unzen; Nagasaki; Kyushu; Japan; Volcano; Eruption; Perception; Natural Hazards; Natural Hazards' exposure; pupils perception; trauma

Domaines: Environnement et Société

Christopher Gomez. Exposure to Volcanic Hazards, and Influence on Perception: A Case Study in Japan, Ten Years After the Unzen Fugendake Eruption. 2006. ⟨hal-00368579⟩