This volume is a critical interrogation of the concept, meaning and experience of disaster in 21st-century Japan. Throughout the chapters, a central theme and guiding theoretical perspective is the recognition of the human element in disasters. The evolution of disaster studies in Japan over the past three decades-and the contextual disaster policy changes and societal processes-shows that the empirical terrain for studying disasters is changing, animating the high interest in the sociology of disaster as an interdisciplinary field.