Book

We Live with the Sea

How should we protect ourselves from water-borne catastrophe? By “ecologizing safety", Littlejohn argues in this new monograph from Duke University Press drawing on long-term fieldwork in northeastern Japan.

Author

Andrew Littlejohn

Date

21 July 2026

Links

Access the book here

Abstract

In We Live with the Sea, Andrew Littlejohn addresses the implementation and controversy surrounding safety infrastructures following the March 2011 tsunami in northeastern Japan. While the Japanese government proposed and enforced infrastructural transformations in the wake of the tsunami, these changes did not consider the impact on residents who built their communities and livelihoods around the coast. Focusing on the tsunami survivors who resisted government plans for increased coastal defenses, Littlejohn highlights alternative proposals offered by the local residents as well as the environmental, ecological, and more-than-human dependencies and imbrications those proposals reveal. In doing so, he argues that imposed modernist safety structures undermine the very things they claim to protect, showing how attempts to “ecologize” safety may offer more sustainable ways of thinking about security, preservation, and infrastructure.