Literature After Fukushima: From Marginalized Voices to Nuclear Futurity

221 Pages·2023·5.952 MB·English

by  Linda Flores, Barbara Geilhorn

Literature after Fukushima
This book analyzes the social impact of literary works addressing Japan’s 3.11
‘triple disaster’—2011 Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and multiple meltdowns at
the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
Through an examination of the key works in the expanding corpus of 3.11
literature, the book explores the ongoing dimensions of the disaster, demonstrating
how it reframed both social reality and discourse, including trauma studies,
ecocriticism, regional identity, food safety, and civil society. The contributions
discuss aspects of these perspectival shifts in the literary world, tracing the
reshaping of Japanese identity in the years after the triple disaster. The cultural
productions explored offer a glimpse into the public imaginary and demonstrate
how disasters can fundamentally reshape our individual and shared conception of
both history and the present moment.
This book contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the
postdisaster climate of Japanese society, adding new perspectives through literary
analysis, and will thus be of interest to scholars and students of Japanese and
Asian Studies, Literary Studies, Environmental Humanities, as well as Cultural
and Transcultural Studies.
Linda Flores is Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature in the Faculty
of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford and the Fellow
in Japanese Studies at Pembroke College, Oxford, UK.
Barbara Geilhorn is Principal Researcher at the German Institute for Japanese
Studies Tokyo (DIJ) and Adjunct Researcher at the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre
Museum, Waseda University, Japan.
Asia’s Transformations
Edited by Mark Selden
Cornell University, USA
The books in this series explore the political, social, economic and cultural
consequences of Asia’s transformations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The series emphasizes the tumultuous interplay of local, national, regional and global
forces as Asia bids to become the hub of the world economy. While focusing on the
contemporary, it also looks back to analyse the antecedents of Asia’s contested rise.
1. Denying the Comfort Women
The Japanese State’s Assault on Historical Truth
Edited by Rumiko Nishino, Puja Kim and Akane Onozawa
2. National Identity, Language and Education in Malaysia
Search for a Middle Ground between Malay Hegemony and Equality
Noriyuki Segawa
3. Japan’s Future and a New Meiji Transformation
International Reflections
Edited by Ken Coates, Kimie Hara, Carin Holroyd and Marie Söderberg
4. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki
Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives
Gwyn McClelland
5. Popular Culture and the Transformation of Japan—Korea Relations
Rumi Sakamoto & Stephen Epstein
6. The Making of Modern Korea, 4th Edition
Adrian Buzo
7. Literature after Fukushima
From Marginalized Voices to Nuclear Futurity
Edited by Linda Flores and Barbara Geilhorn
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Asias-Transformations/book-series/SE0401
Literature after Fukushima
From Marginalized Voices to
Nuclear Futurity
Edited by Linda Flores and
Barbara Geilhorn
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Linda Flores and Barbara Geilhorn;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Linda Flores and Barbara Geilhorn to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-032-25857-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-25858-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-28532-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003285328
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Editors’ Note viii
List of Contributors ix
Introduction 1
LINDA FLORES AND BARBARA GEILHORN
PART 1
Marginalized Voices 9
1 Real Eyes Realize Real Lies: Writing ‘Fukushima’ through
the Child’s Gaze 11
AIDANA BOLATBEKKYZY
2 Animal Stories: Agency after Radiation 29
DOUG SLAYMAKER
 3   Voice  and  Voicelessness:  Reading  Tōhoku  Vernaculars  in 
Post-3.11 Literature 47
KRISTINA IWATA-WEICKGENANNT
PART 2
Spatial Acts 67
4 From That Day Forward:  Tōhoku,  3.11,  and  ‘Memory 
Landscapes’ 69
LINDA FLORES
vi Contents
5 The Nuclear Home and the Alien Village: The Production of
Post-3.11  Space  in  Sakate  Yōji’s  Lone War 91
JUSTINE WIESINGER
6 Between Trauma Processing, Emotional Healing, and
Nuclear Criticism—Documentary Theater Responding to
the Fukushima Disaster 109
BARBARA GEILHORN
PART 3
Border-Crossing 125
 7  Lost  in  Narration  in  Tawada  Yōko’s  The Emissary 127
DAN FUJIWARA
8 Spoiled Meals: Immunitary and Metabolic Imaginaries
in Kawakami Mieko’s ‘Dreams of Love, Etc.’ and Murata
Sayaka’s Convenience Store Woman 143
CHIARA PAVONE
PART 4
Nuclear Futurity 161
 9  Humanism  and  the  Hikari-Event:  Reading  Ōe  With 
Stengers in Catastrophic Times 163
MARGHERITA LONG
10 Afterword: Chernobyl’s Past and Fukushima’s
Remembered Future 180
RACHEL DINITTO
Index 199
Acknowledgments
The Tanaka Symposium in Japanese Studies on ‘Literature after 3.11,’ which was
held at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, in 2017, marks the inception of
Literature after Fukushima. At the time of the symposium, the cultural meanings
associated with the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns at
Fukushima were still very much in a state of flux. In subsequent years, together
with other scholars in the then-nascent field of ‘3.11 studies,’ we embarked on a
collaborative journey that mapped out issues raised by the disaster in a growing
body of literary works. We would like to thank our contributors for their shared
conceptual vision, ongoing commitment, and continued cooperation throughout
the publication process.
We gratefully acknowledge the Tanaka UK Japan Educational Foundation,
whose generous support paved the way for the intensive scholarly exchange at
the symposium that ultimately resulted in this publication. We would also like to
extend our gratitude to Pembroke College, the University of Oxford, the Friedrich
Ebert Foundation, and the German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo. Their
funding was invaluable in bringing this project to its completion.
Special thanks go to series editors Stephanie Rogers and Mark Selden for their
unwavering support and to Hilary Monihan for her consummate professionalism
and meticulous copyediting work.
Editors’ Note
Japanese names are given according to the East Asian convention of family name
first, unless Japanese authors are writing in a language other than Japanese.
The Hepburn system of romanization has been employed throughout, except in
cases where an established convention exists for corporate or individual names.
Unless specifically acknowledged, all translations included in this volume are
attributable to the author of the respective chapter.
Contributors
Aidana Bolatbekkyzy received her MA in Cultural Studies from Nagoya Uni-
versity, Japan, in 2020. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of
East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Oregon. Her research
focuses on contemporary Japanese confinement literature. She has a forthcoming
publication on food in the nuclear Capitalocene.
Rachel DiNitto is Professor of Japanese Literature in the Department of East
Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Oregon. Her current research
focuses on post-3.11 cultural production. In addition to her monograph Fukushima
Fiction: The Literary Landscape of Japan’s Triple Disaster (2019), she has pub-
lished on films and manga relating to the disaster and postwar Japan. Her publica-
tions also appear in Religions, The Asia-Pacific Journal, and Japan Forum and
in the edited volumes The Representation of Japanese Politics in Manga (Roman
Rosenbaum, ed., Routledge 2020), The Japanese Cinema Book (Hideaki Fujiki
and Alastair Phillips, eds., 2020), and Negotiating Disaster: ‘Fukushima’ and the
Arts (Barbara Geilhorn and Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt, eds., Routledge 2017).
Linda Flores is Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Literature in the Faculty
of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford and the Fellow
in Japanese Studies at Pembroke College, Oxford. She has published on topics
including 3.11 fiction and manga as well as on gender and women’s writing. Her
current research focuses on identity and historical memory in literary and cul-
tural productions from the Tōhoku region produced after 3.11. Recent publica-
tions include ‘Matrices of Time, Space, and Text: Intertextuality and Trauma in
Two 3.11 Narratives’ in Japan Review (2017); ‘Jibun no aidentiti e—Takahashi
Takako Sora no hate made to Moriyakku Tere-zu Dekeruu’ in Sekai bungaku to
Nihon kindai bungaku (Noami Mariko, ed., 2019); and ‘Kouno Fumiyo’s Hi no
tori (Bird of the Sun) series as documentary manga: Memory and 3.11’ in Journal
of Adaptation in Film & Performance (2019).
Dan Fujiwara is Associate Professor at the University of Toulouse—Jean Jaurès
(France) and Research Fellow at the French Research Institute for Eastern Asia
(IFRAE). After receiving his PhD from Paris Diderot University, he shifted his