There were plenty of panel discussions and online events this past spring that, one way or another, sought to mark the tenth anniversary of the 3.11 disasters. “Sources of Disaster: A Roundtable Discussion on New Epistemic Perspectives in Post-3.11 Japan” was different from the others on several registers; it brought researchers together with an interlocutor doing the work of community building and reconstruction in the stricken areas, for example, which meant that questions about the utility of the presenters’ scholarship for groups like hers were among the first they had to address. The Roundtable also deviated from the norm a bit in asking presenters not just to report on their findings in the context of their own field’s concerns, but to engage with a series of more formidable provocations. “How do or should the triple disasters of 2011 in Tōhoku Japan serve as a ‘lesson’ for future generations?” was one of these; another described the panel as an inquiry into “how the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disaster of 11 March 2011, changed our ways of knowing the world.”1 I don’t know that any of the other events this past spring were as ambitious in their scope and goals as “Sources of Disaster” set out to be2
