The Culture of the Quake is first and foremost an exploration of Taishô-era narrative fiction. Every major film studio produced earthquake films, and authors from I-novelists to modernists, proletarian writers to popular...
This essay explores two different approaches to disaster found in fiction following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923: trauma and differential vulnerability., Alex Bates, "Fiction from Unstable Ground: The Imagination of...
This volume is devoted to teaching works of Japanese fiction---novels, short stories, and manga (graphic novels and comics)---produced following the end of Japan's war with China, America, and their allies in 1945. The title is...
Ishigami Genʼichirō was at his apartment in the Kobe foothills when the Great Hanshin Awaji earthquake struck on January 17, 1995. Like most people, he was awakened by the early-morning shaking and rushed outside. From the...
The 3.11 triple disasters occurred at a moment of increased anti-immigrant sentiment in Japan exemplified by the activities of the Zaitokukai, a particularly anti-Korean right-wing group. This xenophobic sentiment provided...
Japanese fiction studied in American classrooms is more likely to emphasize Japan's suffering under the atomic bomb than to grapple with that nation's war crimes. Students should be informed of the horrific human costs of...
As Japan moved from the devastation of 1945 to the economic security that survived even the boom and bust of the 1980s and 1990s, its literature came to embrace new subjects and styles and to reflect on the nation’s changing...
The Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 was one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. The initial shock had a magnitude of approximately 7.9, serious by any calculation, but, like many destructive natural events, the...
