This book examines how relationships between guardians and companion animals were challenged during a large-scale disaster: the tsunami of March 2011 and the following nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The author interrogates: 1) How did guardians and their companion animals survive the large disaster?; 2) Why was the relationship between guardians and their companion animals ignored during and after a disaster?; and 3) What structures and/or mechanisms shaped the outcomes for animals and their guardians? Through a critical realist framework, combined with a theoretical perspective developed by Roy Bhaskar and his colleagues, the author argues that despite the trivialization of companion animals by government officials, relationships between animals and guardians were often able to be maintained, in some cases through great pains by the guardians. While the notion of human-animal relationships in Japan has thus far been dominated by economic logic, the author reveals dynamics between guardians and companion animal transcend such structures, forging the concept of bonding rights.  

Hazuki Kajiwara () is a researcher in the Rikkyo University Institute of Social Welfare in Tokyo, Japan, and a part-time lecturer in the School of Veterinary Medicine at Nihon Veterinary and Life Science University, Tokyo, Japan.   

Preface.- Chapter 1: Japanese animals in calamity.- Chapter 2: Methodology.- Part 1: The Tsunami in Iwate and Miyagi Prefectures.- Chapter 3: Everything I did was for Baron.- Chapter 4: Surviving with companion animals.- Part 2: The Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima.- Chapter 5: I have lost the meaning to live.- Chapter 6: Making choices regarding companion animals.- Chapter 7: Complexities in Fukushima.- Part 3: Social Structures and Causal Mechanisms.- Chapter 8: Applying Critical Realism to real life.- Chapter 9: Advancing the notion of bonding rights.