Our cover image is a photograph of two maneki-neko, beckoning cats who are bidding good fortune; they are inscribed with “kizuna,” the phrase that reminds us “we are all in this together.” The photo was taken in the Shizugawa village marketplace in the town of Minami Sanriku-chō in Tohoku, Japan by Theodore C. Bestor, who also authored this issue's presidential address. Bestor took the photo in 2012 while working on disaster recovery projects; some of the results of those projects and further discussion of this image can be found in his address, beginning on page 763.
This issue begins, as does every November issue, with a written version of the Presidential Address given at the annual spring meeting of the Association for Asian Studies. The author is anthropologist Theodore C. Bestor, and his topic is the ways that catastrophes can not...
