Disaster Vulnerability in an Ageing Rural Society: The 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake

The 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake offers an important case for examining disaster in an ageing rural society. Existing studies have contributed substantially to understanding hazard processes and physical damage, but less attention has been given to the structure of vulnerability that shaped both disaster impacts and early recovery. This paper addresses that gap through an integrated analysis of vulnerability, culture and gender. Based on documentary analysis of official reports and peer-reviewed studies, the paper argues that the Noto disaster cannot be explained adequately by hazard impact alone. Its severity was shaped by the interaction of demographic ageing, depopulation, infrastructural fragility, care dependence, health-system constraints and place-based cultural systems. Infrastructure failure became socially consequential because it occurred in a setting marked by advanced ageing, limited redundancy and uneven access to medical care, social care and wider support. The analysis also suggests that culture functioned both as a source of vulnerability and as a possible resource in recovery.